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Series XX Nos. 9-10 

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science 

(Edited 1882-1901 by H. B. ADAMS.) 

J. M. VINCENT 
J. H. HOLLANDER W. W. WILLOUGHBY 

Editors 



THE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF 
PHILIP FRENEAU 



BY 
SAMUEL E. FORMAN, Ph. D. 



BALTIMORE 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 

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^Or 



THE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF 
PHILIP FRENEAU 



'KF'LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

■y«ro CoHEfi Recbived 

Str\ i 1902 

<5n«mtOHT SHTWY 

LASS §«Sifi§JXX Nos. 9-10 

coPYB. JO HNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 

IN 

Historical and Political Science 

(Edited 1882-1 901 by H. B. ADAMS.) 



J. M. VINCENT 
J. H. HOLLANDER W. W. WILLOUGHBY 

Editors 



THE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF 
PHILIP FRENEAU 

BY 
SAMUEL E.'FORMAN, Ph. D. 



BALTIMORE 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 

PUBLISHED MONTHLY 

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1902 






o a/2. 



Copyright, 1902 by 

JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 



THE FRIEDENWALD COMPANY 
BALTIMORE, MD. 



..V/ 



(S PREFACE 

<i In this sketch of Philip Freneau I have tried to bring 

out in its proper proportion the pubHc side of the man s 
career. There have appeared several accounts of Freneau 
as a poet, and these are appreciative and just. But as a 
politician and publicist Freneau has not received the atten- 
tion which he deserves. Historians have been content to 
bestow upon him a contemptuous phrase and let him pass. 
He is a '' reptile journalist," a " barking cur," a " low edi- 
tor," a '* democratic scribbler." Such treatment is unfair 
to the memory of Freneau and is not good history. Any 
one who will take the trouble to get at the facts of Fre- 
neau's life will find that he deserves the gratitude of pos- 
terity, not its contempt. It was a long and stormy Hfe 
and it was lived for human rights and human freedom. 

In the prosecution of my work I have been greatly as- 
sisted by the Librarians of the New York Historical So- 
ciety and of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and to 
these gentlemen my thanks are due. I am also indebted 
to the late Professor H. B. Adams and to Dr. J. M. Vin- 
cent, of the Johns Hopkins University, for valuable sug- 
gestions. 

S. E. FORMAN. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I 
Youth and Early Manhood 9 

CHAPTER II 
The Poet of the Revolution 20 

CHAPTER III 
The Democratic Editor 35 

CHAPTER IV 
The Poet of the War of 1812 80 

CHAPTER V 
Conclusion 97 

Bibliography 103 



THE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF 
PHILIP FRENEAU 



CHAPTER I 

YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD 

Philip Freneau was born of Huguenot parentage in the 
city of New York, January 13, 1752. His father died 
when PhiHp was but a child. His mother upon the death 
of her husband removed from New York to New Jersey, 
and with her four children established herself upon the 
Freneau estate of Mount Pleasant, a settlement just out- 
side of Middletown Point (now Mattawan) in Monmouth 
county. Philip was given into the hands of good tutors 
and proved to be a diligent pupil. One of his teachers 
was the Rev. William Tennant, a divine whose name is 
still held in blessed memory in Monmouth county. Dr. 
Tennant was acting president of Princeton College when 
Freneau entered that institution as a Freshman in 1767.^ 
The youth was so well prepared that the president wrote 
a note to Mrs. Freneau congratulating her upon her son's 
superior acquirements/ Philip remained at Princeton Col- 
lege for four years, and during that period his future career 
was largely determined. The college was a hot-bed of 
w^higgism.^ Teachers and students joined in resisting the 

^ Hageman's History of the College of New Jersey. 

^ Griswold's Poets of America, p. 31. 

^ " Several years before a speck of war against the mother 
country could be discovered, an electric spark of patriotic fire 
was struck in Princeton which betokened the fiame that afterward 
lighted up New Jersey. James Madison in 1770 wrote to Thomas 



10 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau, [474 

pretensions and aggressions of England. The president, 
John Witherspoon, was one of the signers of the Declara- 
tion of Independence. Among the students in whose 
minds rebellion was germinating were Henry Lee, Hugh 
Brackenridge, Samuel Spring, William Bradford, Aaron 
Burr, Frederick Frelinghuysen and James Madison." 
With these great spirits Freneau mingled freely. James 
Madison was his classmate, while Brackenridge, Madison 
and Freneau formed a friendship which remained firm not 
only during their college career, but which was dissolved 
in after years only by death. " These three," says Gris- 
wold, " were all gifted with satirical powers which they 
were fond of displaying as frequently as there were occa- 
sions. They joined in lampooning not only the leaders of 
adverse parties in college, but also those prominent public 
characters who opposed the growing enthusiasm of the 
people for liberty. I have before me a considerable manu- 
script volume of personal and political satires written by 
them in about equal proportions." ^ Freneau and Bracken- 
ridge tried their hands at verse as well. In the attempt 
Brackenridge discovered what he could not do, although 
vanity constrained him to an occasional indulgence in bad 
verse all his life. Freneau's sophomoric pen, on the other 
hand, moved easily and gracefully and turned off lines that 
sometimes sparkled with the light of genius. Some of 
these youthful pieces were included by Freneau in an edi- 
tion of his poems published in after years. Most of them 
are of no consequence, yet they show that Freneau's na- 
tive talent for verse writing was very strong. 

Martin: 'We have no news but the base conduct of the merchants 
in breaking through the spirited resolutions not to import. The 
letters to the merchants regarding their concurrence were lately 
burned by the students of this place in the college yard, all of 
them appearing in black gowns and the bell tolling. There are 
about 115 in the college grammar school, all of them in American 
cloth.' " Princeton and its Institutions, vol. i, p. loi. 

* MacLean's History of the College of New Jersey. 

■^ Poets of America, p. 14. 



475] Youth and Early Manhood. 11 

Freneau was graduated in distinguished company in 
1771. It is doubtful whether Princeton College has ever 
sent out a class that contained a larger per cent of cele- 
brated men. Of the eight who then took their degrees, 
six achieved fame and high position in church, in state, in 
letters, and in science,^ yet neither Freneau nor Madison, 
apparently, took any of the prizes. In the records of the 
college there is an account of the commencement exercises 
of 1771, and the sixth and seventh items of the programme 
are as follows : 

6. An English forensic dispute on the question: Does 
Ancient poetry excel Modern? Mr. Freneau the respond- 
ent, being necessarily absent, his argument in favor of the 
ancients was read. Mr. Williamson answered him; Mr. 
McKnight replied. 

7. A poem on " The Rising Glory of America " by Mr. 
Brackenridge, was received with great applause.'' 

A little further down in the account we find that Mr. 
Madison was also excused from attending the exercises. 
One would like to know where those two young gentle- 
men were upon this important occasion. Freneau ought 
certainly to have been present for he was the largest con- 
tributor to the entertainment. In addition to his speech 
on the poetry of the ancients, he was the principal author 
of the poem that was read by Mr. Brackenridge and that 
gained such hearty applause. There can be no doubt that 
this poem was for the most part composed by Freneau, for 
Brackenridge himself has told us that such was the case.* 



'The members were: i. Gunning Bedford, Member of Conti- 
nental Congress and of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. 
2. John Black. 3. H. H. Brackenridge, Judge of the Supreme 
Court of Pennsylvania and eminent in literature. 4. Donald Camp- 
bell. 5. Philip Freneau. 6. Charles McKnight, the most dis- 
tinguished surgeon of his day. 7. James Madison, President of 
the United States. 8. Samuel Spring, a celebrated divine. 

^ MacLean's History of College of New Jersey, vol. i, p. 313. 

* Southern Literary Messenger, vol. viii, p. 2; also Hildeburn's 
Issue of the Press of Pennsylvania, vol. ii, p. 148. 



12 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [476 

The poem was to have been a joint production, but Brack- 
enridge, recognizing the slowness and heaviness of his 
own lines when compared with the graceful and sponta- 
neous verses of Freneau, wrote but a very small part, be- 
ing content to deliver it from the platform and to leave the 
honors of authorship to his friend. 

In this commencement ode, " The Rising Glory of 
America," Freneau strikes the key-note of his life — resist- 
ance to Great Britain. The Massacre at Boston, March 
5, 1770, is thus glanced at: 

Nor shall these angry tumults here subside, 
Nor murders cease through all these provinces, 
Till foreign crowns have vanished from our view 
And dazzle here no more — no more presume 
To own the spirit of fair liberty. 
Vengeance shall cut the thread, and Britain sure 
Will curse her fatal obstinacy. 

The following is a clever bit of prophecy for a boy of 
nineteen; we find in it a constant and favorite theme of the 
poet — the greatness of America: 

I see, I see 
Freedom's established reign, cities and men, 
Numerous as sands upon the ocean shore. 
An Empire rising where the sun descends! 
The Ohio soon shall glide by many a town 
Of note; and where the Mississippi stream. 
By forests shaded, now runs sweeping on 
Nations shall grow, and States not less in fame 
Than Greece and Rome of old. We too shall boast 
Our Scipios, Solons, Catos, sages, chiefs 
I That in the womb of time yet dormant lie, 

Waiting the joyous hour of life and light. 

Freneau left college in September, 1771, with his mind 
full of epics and his heart full of liberty and hatred for 
oppression. He went to Philadelphia and pretended to 
read law, but probably he neglected his Blackstone for the 
society of wits, for he fell in with the whig leaders of the 
place and established a reputation as an exceedingly clever 
young scape-grace. It was while in Philadelphia in 1772 



477] Youth and Early Manhood. 13 

that he first saw himself in print. In that year the vale- 
dictory ode came out in pamphlet form. The charms of 
authorship seem to have allured him from serious study, 
for he soon abandoned law altogether. In the spring of 
1772 he left Philadelphia and undertook to teach a school 
on Long Island but failed miserably. In the autumn of 
the same year we find him assisting his classmate Brack- 
enridge in the management of an academy on the " East- 
ern Shore " of Maryland. The following letter to James 
Madison, besides giving his experience as teacher, shows 
how restless and aimless was his early manhood: 

Somerset county in Maryland, 

November 22, 1772. 
Sir, 

If I am not wrongly informed by my memory, I have 
not seen you since last April, you may recollect I was then 
undertaking a School at Flatbush on Long Island. I con- 
tinued in it thirteen days — but — 

Long Island have I bid adieu, 

With all its brutish brainless crew. 

The youth of that detested place, 

Are void of reason and of grace, 

From Flatbush hills to Flatbush plains, 

Deep ignorance unrivalled reigns. 

I am very poetical but excuse it. " Si fama non venit 
ad aures/' if you have not heard the rumor of this story 
(which, by the by, is told in various taverns and eating 
houses) you must allow me to be a little prolix with it. 
Those who employed me were some gentlemen from New 
York, some of them are bullies, some merchants, others 
scoundrels: They sent me eight children, the eldest of 
whom was 10 years old. Some could read, others spell 
and a few stammer over a chapter of the Bible — these were 
my pupils and over these I was to preside. My salary 
moreover was £40. There is something else relating to 
that I shall not at present mention. After I forsook them 



14 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [478 

they proscribed me for four days and swore if I was caught 
in New York they would either Trounce or Maim me: 
but luckily I escaped with my goods to Princeton — where 
I remained till commencement — so much for this affair. 

I have printed a poem in New York called the American 
Village, containing about 450 Lines, also a few short pieces 
added; I would send you one if I had a proper opportu- 
nity. The additional poems are — A Poem to the Nymph 
I Never Saw — The Miserable Life of a Pedagogue — and 
Stanzas on an ancient Dutch House on Long Island — As 
to the main poem it is damned by all good and judicious 
judges. My name is on the title page. This is called 
vanity by some — but " who so fond as youthful bards of 
fame?" 

I arrived at this Somerset Academy the i8th of Oc- 
tober and intend to remain here till next October. I am 
assistant to Mr. Brackenridge. This is the last time I 
shall enter into such a business; it worries me to death and 
by no means suits my " giddy, wandering brain." 

I would go over for the gown this time two years, but 
the old hag Necessity has got such a prodigious grip of 
me that I fear I shall never be able to accomplish it. I 
believe if I cannot make this out I must turn quack, and 
indeed I am now reading Physic at my leisure hours, that 
is, when I am neither sleeping, hearing classes, or v/riting 
poetry — for these three take up all my time. 

It is now late at night; not an hour ago I finished a little 
poem of about 400 lines, entitled a Journey to Maryland — 
being the sum of my adventures — it begins — 

From that famed town where Hudson's flood 
Unites with Streams perhaps as good; 
Muse has your bard begun to roam — 

and I intend to write a terrible satire upon certain vicious 
persons of quality in New York — who have also used me 
ill — and print it next fall. It shall contain 5 or 600 lines. 
Sometimes I write pastorals to show my wit. 



479] Youth and Early Manhood. 15 

Deep to the woods I sing a Shepherd's care, 
Deep to the woods . . .° call me there, 
The last retreat of Love and Verse I go, 
Verse made me mad at first — and will keep me so. 

I should have been glad to have heard from you before 
now; while I was in college I had but a short participa- 
tion of your agreeable friendship, and the few persons I 
converse with and yet fewer whose conversation I delight 
in, make me regret the loss of it. I have met a variety of 
rebuffs this year, which I forbear to mention. I look like 
an unmeaning Teague just turned out of the hold of an 
Irish Ship. Coming down hither I met with a rare ad- 
venture at Annapolis. I was destitute of even a brass 
farthing. I got clear very handsomely. Could one ex- 
pect ever to see you again, if I travel through Virginia, I 
shall stop and talk with you a day or two. I should be 
very glad to receive a letter from you if it can be conve- 
niently forwarded. 

In short " Non sum qualis eram" as Partridge says in 
Tom Jones. My hair has grown like a mop, and I have a 
huge tuft of beard directly upon my chin. I want but five 
weeks of twenty-one years of age and already feel stiff with 
age. We have about 30 students in this academy who prey 
upon me like Leeches, 

" When shall I quit this whimpering pack. 
And hide my head in Accomack " 
Shall I leave them and go 
Where Pokomokes long stream meandering flows — 

Excuse this prodigious scrawl without style or sense. 
I send this by Mr. Luther Martin who will forward it to 
Col. Lee — and he to you I hope. Mr. Martin lives in Ac- 
comack in Virginia this side the bay. 

Farewell and be persuaded I remain your truly humble 
servant and friend, 

PH. F-R-E-N-E-A-U-'° 



' Illegible. 

" Manuscript in the Archives of the Department of State at 
Washington. 



16 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [480 

This letter keeps us informed of Freneau's doings as far 
as the autumn of 1773, after which time we lose sight of 
him for a year or two. It is impossible to say where he 
was or what he was doing immediately after leaving Mary- 
land, although we may confidently assume that on all 
occasions and in all places he did pretty much as he 
pleased. When we next meet with him he is in New York, 
the hot-bed of toryism, lampooning the tories. In 1775 
we find him paying his respects in the columns of Hugh 
Gaine's "' " Mercury " to General Gage, who had proclaimed 
in June of that year that the provinces were in a state of 
rebelHon and out of the King's protection. Freneau pro- 
fessed, as rebels are wont to profess, to be deeply injured 
by the epithet " rebel." 

" Rebels you are " — the British Champion cries; 
Truth, stand thou forth and tell the wretch he lies. 
Rebels! and see this mock imperial lord 
Already threats these rebels with a Cord! 

Americans! at Freedom's fane adore! 
But trust to Britain and her flag no more. 
The generous genius of their isle has fled 
And left a mere impostor in his stead. 

To Arms! To Arms! and let the Murdering Sword 

Decide who best deserves the hang-man^ s cord. 

Nor think the hills of Canada too bleak 

When desperate freedom is the prize you seek. 

For that the call of honor bids you go 

O'er frozen lakes and mountains wrapped in snow. 

Haste! to your tents, in iron fetters bring 
Those slaves that serve a tyrant and a king. 
So just, so virtuous is your cause, I say 
Hell must prevail if Britain gains the day.^^ 

" Hugh Gaine, an Irishman, was the editor of the New York 
Mercury. His journal was edited in the interest of the whig party 
until the British troops approached New York in 1776. Then he 
went over to the royal cause. His double course is severely 
criticised by Freneau in his poem entitled: "The Political Biog- 
raphy of Hugh Gaine." 

" The poem h-om which those lines are taken is addressed " To 
The Americans, on the rumored approach of the Hessian forces." 



481] Youth and Early Manhood. 17 

Thus the young man, without the shghtest hesitation, 
and without any authority or responsibihty, declares in 
the most fervid language for American Independence and 
proclaims a war upon England a twelve-month before 
Jefferson drew up the famous Declaration of the Fourth of 
July, 1776. In truth, such daring lines as these quick- 
ened the minds of the colonists and did much to create 
the sentiment which made the Declaration of Independence 
a plausible thing. To strong and brave minds, to the 
Henrys, and Otises and Hancocks, the only solution of 
the difficulties with the mother country was to be found in 
the absolute severance of all political ties. In this opin- 
ion Freneau shared to the fullest extent. In the year 1775 
the opinion-makers of the Revolution were exceedingly 
busy and none were more active than the young poet. In 
verse, sometimes good, more frequently bad, always bold 
and always effective, he held up for the detestation of man- 
kind. General Gage, Lord North, King George the Third, 
and the royal Governors, wherever he could find them. 
One of the shortest of these poems will serve to show how 
the cutting and slashing of the pen preceded the cutting 
and slashing of the sword, and how telling was Freneau's 
work as a precursor of a great movement. The poem is 
given entire. 

EMANCIPATION FROM BRITISH DEPENDENCE. 

Libera nos, Domine, Deliver us, O Lord, 

Not only from British Dependence but also — 

From a junto that labor for absolute power, 
Where schemes disappointed have made them look sour, 
From the lords of the council who fought against freedom 
Who still follow on where delusion shall lead them. 

From a group at St. James that slight our petitions, 
And fools that are waiting for further submissions, 
From a nation whose manners are rough and abrupt. 
From scoundrels and rascals whom gold can corrupt, 
34 



18 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [482 

From pirates sent out by command of the king 
To murder and plunder but never to swing, 
From Wallace and Graves and Vipers and Roses " 
Whom, if Heaven pleases we will give bloody noses, 

From the valliant Dunmore with his crew of banditti, 
Who plunder Virginians at Williamsburg city, 
From hot-headed Montague mighty to swear, 
The little fat man, with his pretty white hair, 

From bishops in Britain, who butchers are grown. 
From slaves that would die for a smile of the throne, 
From assemblies that vote against Congress proceedings, 
(Who have seen the fruit of their stupid misleadings). 

From Tyron," the mighty, who flies from our city. 
And swelled with importance disdains the committee; 
(But since he is pleased to proclaim us his foes, 
What the devil care we where the devil he goes); 

From the caitiff Lord North, who' would bind us in chains. 
From our noble King Log, with his tooth-full of brains, 
Who dreams and is certain (when taking a nap) 
He has conquered our lands, as they lay on his map, 

From a Kingdom that bullies and hectors and swears, 
I send up to heaven my wishes and prayers, 
That we disunited, may freemen be still. 
And Britain go on — to be damn'd if she will. 

The young verse-maker was sure as to the course to be 
pursued by America, but he was not sure as to the prob- 
lem that confronted his individual life. The poetry in his 
nerves unbalanced him and weakened his purposes. His 
property in New Jersey was neglected, and gradually be- 
gan to slip from his hands. The young patriot followed 
his instinct — often a surer guide than reason— and aban- 
doned himself to verse-making. The muse he chose was 
satire. The troublous times, he said, admitted of no other 
choice. 

In doing this Freneau was building better than he knew. 
The pieces which he sent to the press every week were 

" " Wallace and Graves," British naval officers. " Vipers " and 
" Roses," the names of two ships in the English service. 
" The last royal governor of New York. 



483] Youth and Early Manhood. 19 

rarely ineffectual. They made the tories wince and they 
inspired the whigs with hope and courage. They brought 
him no money, yet they did better than this. They ren- 
dered the country an important service, and they brought 
their author lasting fame : they made him the " Poet of the 
Revolution." 



' CHAPTER II 

THE POET OF THE REVOLUTION 

In 1776, Freneau left New York and its tory citizens to 
their own devices and embarked upon a vessel bound for 
the Danish West Indies. According to one account he 
sailed as the agent of a New York trading firm; another 
account states that he shipped as a common sailor and 
worked his way up to the post of captain.^ It is certain 
that he learned the art of navigation and that he soon be- 
came the master of a ship. From this time on we shall 
find him a rover, now upon the sea, now upon the land; 
now a captain, now an editor, but always a poet, writing 
for the American cause. 

His first voyage was to the Virgin Islands, where he 
seems to have remained for some time. He fell in love 
with the natural beauties of the southern isles, and con- 
ceived a disgust for their institutions. Slavery was always 
an abomination in his eyes. The mild form of northern 
servitude was distasteful to him, but the degraded condi- 
tion of the West Indian slave awakened the warmest indig- 
nation in his generous mind. In a poem descriptive of the 
island of Santa Cruz, he expresses in sorrowful strain his 
repugnance to the ugly form of human bondage found 
there. " It casts," he says in a preface to this poem, '' a 
shade over the native charms of the country; it blots out 
the beauty of the eternal spring which Providence has 
there ordained to reign; and amidst all the profusions of 
beauties which nature has scattered — the brightness of the 
heavens, the mildness of the air, and the luxuriance of the 
vegetable kingdom — it leaves me melancholy and discon- 



^ American Magazine of History, vol. xvii, p. 124. 



485] The Poet of the Revolution. 21 

solate. Thus the earth which, were it not for the lust of 
pride and dominion, might be an earthly paradise, is, by 
the ambition and overbearing nature of mankind, rendered 
an eternal scene of desolation, woe, and horror: the weak 
go to the wall while the strong prevail." ' 

This hatred of slavery was not an evanescent passion of 
youth doomed through the hardening processes of years 
to die; it was a settled principle of his life and conduct. 
In another poem, written in middle life, he thus holds up 
the torch of liberty, and with it runs ahead of his times by 
half a century: 

" O come the time and haste the day 
When man shall man no longer crush; 
When reason shall enforce her sway, 
Nor these fair regions raise one blush, 
Where still the African complains. 
And mourns his yet unbroken chains." ^ 

'' In after life," says Duyckinck, " when the poet himself 
became the owner of slaves in New Jersey, he uniformly 
treated them with kindness, manumitted them in advance 
of the Emancipation Act in the State, and supported on 
the farm those of them who were too old to take care of 
themselves." 

When Freneau returned to America, independence had 
been declared and the Revolution was progressing with 
varying fortune. The poet threw himself into the strug- 
gle with a poet's ardor. One of his first acts after fairly 
getting upon land was to ratify the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence in four hundred spirited verses. This poem, en- 
titled " American Independent," was printed at Philadelphia 
in 1778 at the press of Robert Bell, the printer of Thomas 
Paine's " Common Sense." When foreign troops were 
ravaging the land, when the principal cities were in pos- 
session of the enemy, when the Continental Army at Val- 
ley Forge was starving, when toryism threatened to wreck 
the cause of liberty, Freneau's animating voice was heard. 

^ United States Magazine, 1779. ^ Poems, edition of 1795. 



.22 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [486 

Americans! revenge your country's wrongs 

To you the honor of the deed belongs. 

Expel yon thieves from these polluted lands, 

Expect no peace * till haughty Britain yields, 

Till humbled Britons quit your ravaged fields. 

No dull debates or tedious councils know, 

But rush at once embodied on your foe! 

Your injured country groans while yet they stay, 

Attend her groans, and force their hosts away. 

Your mighty wrongs the tragic muse shall trace, 

Your gallant deeds shall fire a future race. 

To you may Kings and potentates appeal, 

You may the doom of jarring nations seal, 

A glorious empire rises bright and new, 

Firm be its base, and it must rest on you. 

Fame o'er the mighty pile extends her wings. 

Remote from princes, bishops, lords, and kings, — 

Those fancied gods, who famed through every shore, 

Mankind have fashioned and like fools adore. 

Freneau kept his eye upon the events of the day and 
cheered and exhorted and celebrated as the poet-general 
of a revolution should. But he was not content to lurk 
and write. In 1778 New Jersey became the battle-ground 
of the revolution, and the region of the poet's home was 
filled with the soldiery of the contending parties. The 
battle of Monmouth was fought almost within sight of his 
ancestral door. Philip shouldered his gun for the defense 
of his fireside. He entered the army as a private and was 
promoted to the rank of sergeant.^ His career as a soldier 
was brief and unimportant, but it served to show the stuff 
of which he was made. 

Freneau soon laid down the sword for the pen. The 
year following the battle of Monmouth (1779) was a busy 
one, and was more profitably spent than if he had remained 
in the field. Poem after poem came out to revive the 
flagging spirits of the revolutionists. His old college- 
mate and colleague in poetry, Hugh Brackenridge, was 
in Philadelphia trying to drive the wolf from the door by 

* Aimed at Lord North's " Conciliating Bills " which arrived in 
New York in April, 1778, and which conciliated nobody. 
■* Jerseymen in the Revolution, p. 465. 



487] The Poet of the Revolution. 23 

editing "The United States Magazine, A Repository of 
History, Politics and Literature." The columns of this 
periodical were open to Freneau and he became one of its 
principal contributors. Brackenridge used a free lance 
and his magazine was feared and hated.^ In addition to 
the poems that were written on the voyage to the West 
Indies, there appeared in this magazine Freneau's " King 
George the Third's Soliloquy," and his " Dialogue be- 
tween his Britannic Majesty and Mr. Fox." The object of 
these pieces was to urge on to carnage and conquest rather 
than to awaken feelings of the sublime and beautiful. They 
are blunt, coarse appeals to the Americans to " up and at 
the bloody red coats," and there is no poetry in them. The 
British army is characterized as a band of devils that it 
would be a mercy to rid the earth of. George III in solil- 
oquy, thus describes his method of raising a force to march 
against America: 

Is there a robber close in Newgate hemmed? 
Is there a cut-throat fettered and condemned? 
Haste loyal slaves, to George's standard come, 
Attend his lectures when you hear the drum! 
Your chain I break; for better days prepare; 
Come out my friends from prison and from care. 
Far to the West I plan your desperate sway, — 
There 'tis no sin to ravage, burn, and slay. 
There without fear your bloody aims pursue. 
And show mankind what English thieves can do. 

In the dialogue between Fox and King George, the lib- 
eral-minded and far-seeing statesman thus advised his 
monarch : 

In one short sentence take my whole advice, 
(It is no time to flatter and be nice) 
With all your soul for instant peace contend. 
Then shall you be your country's truest friend; 
Peace, instant peace, may stay your tottering throne. 
But wars and death and blood can profit none. 
Withdraw your arms from the American shore. 
And vex her ocean with your fleet no more; 
Implore the friendship of the injured states, 
Nor longer strive against the stubborn fates. 

® Southern Literary Messenger, vol. vii, p. 3. 



24 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [488 

But the haughty monarch would not Hsten to Fox, or to 
any one else. The war went on by land and by sea, and 
whether by land or by sea, Freneau was prompt to record 
in "superior [?] lays" the glorious deeds of the Ameri- 
cans. In 1779, the gallant Paul Jones of the Bon Homme 
Richard, gloriously defeated Captain Pearson of the Sera- 
pis, and the victory was duly celebrated by our poet, and 
the victor thus urged on to further conquest: 

Go on great man to scourge the foe, 
And bid these haughty Britons know 
They to our thirteen states shall bend; 
The stars that veiled in dark attire 
Long ghmmered with a feeble fire, 
But radiant now ascend. 

Bend to the stars that flaming rise 

On western worlds, more brilliant skies, 

Fair Freedom's reign restored. 

So when the Magi came from far 

Beheld the God-attending star, 

They trembled and adored. 

" The United States Magazine " died in the first year of 
its life and its talented editor abandoned journalism and 
sought and gained distinction in law. Freneau was in 
no sense the editor of this magazine, as has been stated so 
frequently.'' He simply gave a helping hand to his friend 
Brackenridge, who was the real proprietor. 

After the magazine had gone under, Freneau ventured 
again upon the sea. This time he sailed for the West In- 
dies with letters of marque against British commerce, 
commanding the Aurora, a smart little craft fitted out for 
privateering.* But Freneau's naval achievements were 
destined to be of no greater importance than his career as 
a land soldier. When his vessel was well beyond the 

^ See Griswold's Male Poets of America, p. 32, and Alibone's 
Dictionary of Authors. 

® Forman's Journey down the Ohio, p. 10. From Freneau's own 
account of this voyage, it does not appear that he was the actual 
commander. See his " Some Account of the Capture of the ship 
Aurora " recently published for the first time. 



489] The Poet of the Revolution. 25 

capes at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, she was pursued, 
and after a sharp engagement, was captured by the British 
cruiser Iris. The captives were taken to New York and 
confined in a British prison-ship that lay moored of¥ the 
battery. Freneau was placed upon the Scorpion, where he 
was kept two months, and then, when dangerously sick of 
a fever, was removed to the hospital-ship Hunter, "' to all 
hospitals disgrace." From the Hunter in a short time he ' 
escaped, broken and emaciated by the cruel experiences 
through which he had passed. Of course the incident be- 
came the occasion of a poem. The whole story is told 
in " The British Prison-Ship," in four cantos, written and 
published in 1781. 

Freneau wrote nothing for the American cause that was 
more effective than this piece. In it the cruelty and inhu- 
manity of the British were depicted by the hand of one who 
had himself seen and suffered. " The picturesque inci- 
dents of the voyage which is described; the animated ac- 
tion of the capture; the melancholy circumstances of the 
prison-ship contrasted with the happy scenes of the shore; 
the stern terrors of the Hospital, are all in Freneau's best 
vein."^ The following lines are too realistic to be untrue: 

Such food they sent to make complete our woes,-.- 
It looked like carrion torn from hungry crows: 
Such vermin vile on every joint were seen, 
So black, corrupted, mortilEied, and lean. 
That once we tried to move our flinty chief, 
And thus addressed him, holding up the beef: 

" See, Captain, see! what rotten bones we pick; 
What kills the healthy cannot cure the sick; 
Not dogs on such by Christian men are fed, 
And see, good master, see what lousy bread! " 

" Your meat or bread," this man of death replied, 

" 'Tis not my care to manage or provide — 
But this, base rebel dogs, I'd have you know 
That better than your merit we bestow." 

When the poet escaped from the clutches of the British, 
he returned to Philadelphia and slowly regained his health. 

® Poems of the Revolution, edited by E. A. Duyckinck, p. 10. 



26 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [490 

He soon resumed his post as verse-chronicler of the revo- 
lution and followed with anxious eyes the closing scenes 
of the struggle. On the eighth of October, 1781, he ad- 
dressed these savage and semi-prophetic lines to the proud 
Cornwallis : 

Would thou at last with Washington engage, 
Sad object of his pity not his rage? 
See round thy posts how terribly advance 
The chiefs, the armies, and the fleets of France. 
Fight while you can for warlike Rochambeau 
Aims at your head his last decisive blow; 
Unnumbered ghosts from earth untimely sped, 
Can take no rest till you like them are dead. 
Then die, my lord; that only chance remains 
To wipe away dishonorable stains. 
For small advantage would your capture bring — 
The plundering servant of a bankrupt king.^'' 

A month later came Yorktown and the consummation 
of American Independence. Freneau, like all Americans, 
hated Cornwallis bitterly, and gloated over the fallen 
chief in coarse and careless verse. With this malediction 
he sped him from our shores: 

Now curst with life, a foe to man and God, 
Like Cain we drive you to the land of Nod; 
He with a brother's blood his hands did stain. 
One brother he, — you have a thousand slain. 
And may destruction rush with speedy wing. 
Low as yourself to drag each tyrant king.^^ 

The war was over but there was aftermath enough to 
keep the patriotic pen of Freneau in motion. When the 
traitor Arnold left New York in December, 1781, the 
poet's fiercest and choicest curse went with him; the battle 
of Eutaw Springs was celebrated in a lyric that Scott 
learned by heart and regarded as one of the finest things 
in the language; Washington, on his way to Virginia was 
greeted in Philadelphia by a worthy ode; the rejoicing over 
the recognition of National Independence stirred the poet 

^0 Poems Relating to the Revolution, p. 121. " Ibid., p. 132. 



491] The Poet of the Revolution. 27 

to one of his highest flights/' Taking it altogether, the 
year 1782 was a most productive one. Freneau seems to 
have settled down to literature with the purpose of making 
a living out of it. He wrote constantly and much, both 
in prose and verse, for '' The Freeman's Journal," through- 
out the three years of its existence. 

Freneau was now enjoying fame as poet, essayist and 
patriot, but money was not forthcoming. America was 
too poor to pay for literature and the poet was driven to 
seek bread upon the water. Next to literature he loved 
the sea. He became captain of a vessel and it was a com- 
mon occurrence of his life to sail down to the West Indies 
with a cargo of grain, and bring up a cargo of molasses 
and poetry. In 1784, we find him wandering about among 
the ruins of old Port Royal and riming the sad condition 
of that unfortunate and desolate place. For five or six 
years without interruption, he led the hardy life of a tar. 

In April, 1789, George Washington proceeded in tri- 
umph through the States to New York to be inaugurated 
as president. " Thursday last between two and three 
o'clock," says the *' Gazette of the United States " of 
April 25, 1789, " the most illustrious president of the 
United States arrived in this city. At Elizabethtown he 
was received by a deputation of three senators and five 
representatives of the United States, and the officers of the 
state and corporation, with whom he embarked on the 
barge for the purpose of wafting him across the bay. It is 
impossible to do justice to an attempt to describe the 
scene exhibited in his Excellency's approach to the city." 
In another column in the same number of the Gazette is 
this notice: 

" Thursday, April 23, arrived here the schooner Colum- 
bia, P. Freneau, in 8 days from Charleston. On board 
was Dr. King from S. America, with a collection of nat- 
ural curiosities, particularly a male and female ourang- 
outang." 

" Poems of the Revolution, pp. 201, 260, 270. 



28 The Political Activities of Philip Prenean. [49S 

Captain Freneau, with Dr. King and his monkeys on 
board, brought his ship into Hne and sailed up the bay with 
the gay and magnificent procession of boats that escorted 
the president-elect to the capital city. When the poet 
landed he found himself in the midst of old friends. There 
was his room-mate and classmate, James Madison, the 
young "father of the constitution"; there was the ambi- 
tious and unscrupulous Aaron Burr; and, the rising Henry 
B. Livingston, boon companions at Princeton. These 
men, now powerful in the nation, were glad to grasp the 
hand of their old friend, for they recognized in him one 
almost as famous as themselves and one not inferior in 
talent. Freneau was charmed by the new and invigorating 
associations of New York life. He gave up his ship and 
again took up his pen. He made friends with the leading 
democrats, and was soon conspicuous as a champion of 
democracy. The pen of a contemporary has left us a pic- 
ture of him as he moves about in printing offices and 
government halls, or stands chatting with senators and 
generals. '' He was somewhat below the ordinary height; 
in person, he was thin yet muscular; his countenance was 
traced by care; he was mild in enunciation, neither rapid 
nor slow, but clear, distinct and emphatic. His forehead 
was rather beyond the medium elevation; his eyes a dark 
gray, occupying a socket deeper than common; his hair 
a beautiful iron gray. He was free of all ambitious dis- 
plays. His habitual expression was pensive. His dress 
might have passed for that of a farmer." '^ 

Freneau found employment as a writer for the New 
York Daily Advertiser." He does not seem to have been 

" Sketch of Freneau in Dr. J. W. Francis' Cyclopedia of Ameri- 
can Literature, vol. i, p. 333. 

""About 1790," says Major Samuel Forman in his "Journey 
down the Ohio," " Captain Freneau married my sister Eleanor." 
Eleanor Forman was the daughter of Samuel Forman of New 
Jersey, one of Freneau's neighbors, and a hero of the revolution. 
The poet and Eleanor seemed to have been drawn together by 
an affinity of tastes, for she was a verse-maker as well as he. 



493] The Poet of the Revolution. 29 

its editor, as Hudson and others assert, but its manager or 
superintendent — a kind of man-of-all-work/' One of his 
co-laborers upon the Advertiser was John Pintard, a warm 
personal friend, and the translating-clerk in the Depart- 
ment of State. Freneau worked vigorously for the Ad- 
vertiser, and he was soon recognized in political circles as 
a strong ally of the anti-federalists. 

In 1790, Thomas Jefferson came to New York to as- 
sume the duties of Secretary of State. He had just come 
from Paris where he had been an eye witness of the storm- 
ing of the Bastile and had learned from terrible object- 
lessons to respect the power of the masses. When he 
arrived in New York, his democracy was at a white heat 
and he eagerly set about building up a democratic party. 
He met Freneau and found him a congenial spirit. The 
true eye of the great politician saw^ in the poet good tim- 
ber for the edifice it was his intention to rear. Jefferson, 
as a well-known patron of letters, was in a position to 
make overtures to any man of distinguished talents. An 
opportunity to render Freneau good service soon pre- 
sented itself. When the government removed to Phila- 
delphia early in 1791, John Pintard, the French translator 
in Jefferson's office, resigned his place, declining to leave 
New York for the pitiable stipend of two hundred and fifty 
dollars per annum, the amount appropriated for the trans- 
lating-clerk. Madison and Henry Lee urged Jefferson to 
appoint Freneau to the position made vacant by Pintard. 
Jefferson gladly acceded to their request, and on February 
28, 1 79 1, wrote to Freneau as follows: 

''Sir: The clerkship for foreign languages in my office 
is vacant. The salary indeed, is very low, being but two 



The writer has seen in manuscript some very clever verses written 
by Mrs. Freneau. For several years before marriage, their cor- 
respondence is said to have been conducted largely in rhyme. 
The Freneau home, when we get glimpses of it, was a happy one, 
albeit unthrifty. 

^^ Hudson's Journalism in America, p. 175. 



30 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [494 

hundred and fifty dollars; but also, it gives so little to do 
as not to interfere with any other calling the person may 
choose which would not absent him from the seat of gov- 
ernment. I was told a few days ago that it might perhaps 
be convenient for you to accept it. If so, it is at your ser- 
vice. It requires no other qualification than a moderate 
knowledge of the French. Should any thing better turn 
up within my department that might suit you, I should be 
very happy to bestow it as well. Should you conclude to 
accept the present, you may consider it as engaged to you, 
only be so good as to drop me a line informing me of your 
resolution." '' 

We have not Freneau's reply to this letter but we know 
that he was in no hurry to accept the offer. It was his in- 
tention to remove from New York, his work upon the 
Advertiser rendering him but slender returns; but he had 
misgivings about going to Philadelphia. His immediate 
project was to settle in New Jersey and to establish a 
country newspaper, a plan which he long cherished and one 
which he finally carried out. Madison, however, saw the 
value of the man as a democratic publicist and would not 
listen to his burying himself in the obscurity of a New 
Jersey village. He went to Freneau and reasoned with 
him, endeavoring to make him sensible of the advantages 
that Philadelphia offered for his private undertaking over 
a small country town. He explained the nature of the 
services required of him as translator in the Department 
of State. Freneau had thought that he would be expected 
to turn English into French, and feeling his incompetency 
for this work, delicacy forbade him to accept the position. 
Madison dissipated this objection by assuring him that no 
such task would be required of him. Freneau listened to 
the solicitations of his friend and decided to go to Phila- 
delphia at once. Madison wrote to Jefferson stating that 
he might expect Freneau in Philadelphia in a very short 

^® Jefferson's Works, vol. iii, p. 215. 



495] The Poet of the Revolution. 31 

time. The letter contains a tribute to Freneau's char- 
acter and genius, and principles, and closes with these 
words : " It is certain that there is not to be found in the 
whole catalogue of American Printers [Editors] a single 
name that can approach rivalship."" 

But Freneau halted in New Jersey, and Jefferson con- 
cluded that he had abandoned the notion of going to 
Philadelphia. On May 9 Jefferson wrote to Madison: 

" Your favor of the first came to hand on the third. 
Mr. Freneau has not followed it. I suppose, therefore, he 
has changed his mind back again, for which I am sorry." " 
A few days after this Jefferson wrote to Thomas Mann 
Randolph, his son-in-law, as follows: 

" I enclose you Bache's as well as Fenno's papers. You 
will have perceived that the latter is a paper of pure tory- 
ism, disseminating the doctrine of monarchy, aristocracy, 
and the exclusion of the people. We have been trying to 
get another weekly or half-weekly set up, excluding ad- 
vertisements, so that it might go through the States and 
furnish a whig vehicle of intelligence. We hoped at one 
time to have persuaded Freneau to set up here but 
failed." " 

Jefferson did not intend to lose Freneau if he could help 
it. Further pressure was brought to bear upon the editor. 
Gen. Henry Lee, another friend, wrote to him and urged 
him to embrace the opportunities of a career at the seat 
of government.^" The general promised aid in securing 
subscribers for the projected paper and, (Parton says) ad- 
vanced money for the enterprise."^ Jefferson, on July 21, 
1791, again wrote to Madison with the view of getting Fre- 
neau. " I am sincerely sorry," he says, " that Freneau has 
declined coming here. Though the printing biisiness be 

" Writings of Madison, vol, i, p. 535. 
^^ Jefferson's Writings, vol. v, p. 330. 
^' Ibid., vol. V, p. 336. 

"° Randall's Life of Jefferson, vol, ii, p. 74. 
^^ Parton's Life of Jefferson, p. 433. 



32 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [496 

sufficiently full here, yet I think he would set out on such 
advantageous grounds as to have been sure of success. 
His own genius, in the first place, is so superior to that of 
his competitors. I should have given him the perusal of 
all my letters of foreign intelligence and all foreign news- 
papers, the publication of all proclamations and other pub- 
lic notices within my department, and the printing of the 
laws, which added to his salary would have been a consid- 
erable aid. Besides this, Fenno's being the only weekly 
paper and under general condemnation for its toryism and 
its incessant efforts to over-turn the government, Freneau 
would have found that ground as good as unoccupied." 

This encouragement from such influential quarters 
finally caused Freneau to abandon his original scheme and 
settle in Philadelphia. On the twenty-fifth of July, four 
days after Jefferson's last letter to Madison, he himself 
wrote to Madison: 

" Some business detains me here [in New Jersey] a day 
or two longer from returning to New York. When I 
come, which I expect will be upon Thursday, if you shall 
not have left the city, I will give you a decisive answer 
relative to printing my paper at the seat of government 
instead of New York. If I can get Mr. Childs to be con- 
nected with me on a tolerable plan I believe I shall sacri- 
fice other considerations and transfer myself to Philadel- 
phia." 

Freneau came to terms with the printer, Childs, and in 
a short time repaired to Philadelphia, leaving his family 
temporarily behind him. In the course of a few days after 
his arrival he received the following document: 

" Philip Freneau is hereby appointed clerk for foreign 
languages in the office of Secretary of State, with a salary 
of two hundred and fifty dollars a year, to commence from 
the time he shall take the requisite oaths of qualification. 
Given under my hand and seal this i6th day of August, 
179I' Thomas Jefferson.'"^ 

'' Jefferson MS. Archives of State Department at Washington. 



497] The Poet of the Revolution. 33 

This is the story of Freneau's coming to Philadelphia to 
set up a paper and of his appointment to an office under 
Jefferson. It is a simple story and one that is not sug- 
gestive of crookedness upon the part of any of the per- 
sons connected with it. As far as Freneau is concerned, 
his course was one of absolute single-mindedness through- 
out. He intended to start a newspaper of his own, and a 
democratic newspaper at that. If he did not set up one in 
New Jersey, then he would start one in New York. Jef- 
ferson, Madison, and other democrats, hearing of this, 
held out, in a perfectly honorable way, inducements for him 
to establish his paper in Philadelphia, and after due re- 
flection he adopted the counsel of his friends. Those 
friends knew that he intended to edit a paper — that indeed 
he must do something of the kind or starve. They knew, 
moreover, that he was a fierce and uncompromising demo- 
crat and that he would conduct the paper according to his 
own notions. What their motives were in getting such a 
man to come to the seat of government is very easy to 
determine. They wanted the influence of his pen for party 
purposes. Whether Jefferson was justified in using pa- 
tronage for the accomplishment of his purpose is a prob- 
lem of ethics for those who are interested in the question 
to solve. It may be here remarked that from the begin- 
ning of our government to the present day influential edi- 
tors have fared very well in the matter of federal appoint- 
ments. With Freneau, the establishing of his paper in 
Philadelphia was purely a matter of business, and it is dif- 
ficult to conceive how there could have arisen in his mind 
any quibbling as to the rightfulness or wrongfulness of his 
earning a little additional money by translating. The mat- 
ter would not be worth referring to, if, as we shall see 
later, so much had not been made of it by the enemies of 
Freneau and of Jefferson. 

We shall now take up a chapter in Freneau's history 
which has not received the consideration it deserves. We 
shall follow Freneau in his career as an editor. We all 
35 



34 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [498 

know something of him in a vague sort of way as a poet. 
We know a little of him, too, as an editor, but, unfortu- 
nately what we know of him as an editor is false knowl- 
edge. Washington Irving called him a " barking cur,'^ 
and succeeding historians down to Goldwin Smith, who re- 
fers to him as a '' reptile journalist," have been content to 
perpetuate a false and unjust estimate of the man. 



CHAPTER III 

THE DEMOCRATIC EDITOR 

The plan and purposes of the new paper were published 
at considerable length. The Gazette was to appear every 
Wednesday and Saturday;^ the subscription price was to be 
three dollars per annum; the, news published was to be of 
national character, especial attention being promised to 
the doings of the national government; the columns of the 
Gazette were to be open to all original and interesting 
productions whether prose or verse; political discussion 
was to be conducted with perfect fairness and the great- 
est latitude; the debates of congress and reports of de- 
partments were to be printed; all important books were to 
be reviewed; advertisements were to be allotted a certain 
space and were not to encroach upon the columns intended 
for general reading matter. 

The title of the paper, '' The National Gazette," suggests 
the aims of its founder. It was to be a paper for circula- 
tion in all parts of the union. It was to be an organ with 
national influence and a national constituency as opposed 
to those papers which appealed to local constituencies 
and which rarely found their way out of the neighborhood 
in which they were printed. This was the idea of the editor 
and his advisers, and every effort was made to keep the 
paper cosmopolitan and to get it into distant parts. 

Freneau pushed forward the publication of the Gazette 
and the first number came from the press several days be- 
fore it was announced to appear. In the first issues there 
was nothing to shadow forth that violent partisanship 
which later was to make its editor one of the best hated 

^ It was actually published every Monday and Thursday. 

s 



36 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [500 

men in America. In one respect, indeed, it offended from 
the beginning the opinion of a large and influential ele- 
ment of the American people. It supported without re- 
serve the principles of the French revolution. Its col- 
umns were filled with equality and fraternity, and Tom 
Paine and Rousseau. Aside from this undisguised endorse- 
ment of w^hat was then to many minds, political heresy, its 
tone was mild, and its articles harmless and colorless. 
Its professed policy was broad and patriotic. It early 
maintained the doctrine that the union between the states 
should be social and commercial as well as political. " The 
interests of the northern and southern states are insepa- 
rable forever. It seems to have been the design of nature 
in her formation and distribution of that part of North 
America known by the name of the United States, that a 
mutual dependence should take place between the north- 
ern and southern inhabitants." ^ But the tendency of the 
paper was unmistakable. It appealed to the common 
people as the true rulers of government. Its evident pur- 
pose was to evoke and energize the spirit of democracy. 

Was there need for such a paper? Was the spirit of 
democracy flagging and the tide running toward a gov- 
ernment, strong, centralized, and aristocratic? Was the 
constitution, as Jefferson says it was, galloping toward 
monarchy? We cannot understand Freneau and the part 
he played in public affairs until we have found answers to 
these questions, and to answer them we must try to get as 
clear a notion as possible of the state of political opinion 
in the United States in 1791. 

To do this let us begin with the rulers. Let us interro- 
gate those who were in the saddle at the time, and deter- 
mine the direction they were galloping by the tendency of 
their thought; for as men think, so are they. 

If we begin with the President, there can be no doubt 
of Washington's perfect loyalty to the constitution and to 

^ National Gazette, November, 1791. 



501] The Democratic Editor. 37 

a republican form of government. In 1786, indeed, he 

recognized that times were changing, and that monarchy 

was in the air,^ but he deprecated with the utmost horror 

the progress of monarchical sentiment. Freneau has 

attested to the soundness of the great chief's republicanism 

in these lines: 

" Oh Washington, thrice glorious name! 
What due rewards can man decree? 
Empires are far below thy aim, 
And sceptres have no charm for thee. 
Virtue alone has your regard, 
And she must be your great reward." 

We pass from the President to the Vice-president. John 
Adams has written many hundreds of pages upon the sub- 
ject of government, but human reason cannot fathom his 
meaning and what he really thought will never be known.* 
Madison, open and above board, spoke of him to Washing- 
ton as aiming at mixed monarchy," but Adams said he was 
not aiming at monarchy, and we must believe he knew his 
motives better than Madison knew them. We cannot get 
from his writings what Adams thought, but we can learn 
from them what he felt. He hated democracy, he loved 
a strong government. " Democracy," ^ he says, " never 
has been and never can be so desirable as aristocracy or 
monarchy, but while it lasts, is more bloody than either. 
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, 

^ Sparks' Life and Writings of Washington, vol. ix, p. 187. 

* An English reviewer of the day thought he understood Adams: 
" The great and leading idea which runs through the ingenious 
and learned works of Mr. Adams is that a mixture of the three 
powers, the regal, the aristocratical and the democratical, prop- 
erly balanced, comprises the most perfect form of government." 
American Daily Advertiser, Nov., 1792. Such an interpretation 
must have been based upon such statements as these: " The Eng- 
lish Constitution is the only scientifical government." John 
Adams' Works, vol. vi, p. 118. "A hereditary first magistrate 
would perhaps be preferable to an elective one." 

^ In a conversation with the President in 1792, Writings of 
Madison, vol. i, p. 558. 

® John Adams' Works, vol. vi, p. 483. 



38 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [502 

exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democ- 
racy that did not commit suicide." And again: "It is 
true and I rejoice in it, that our president has more power 
than the stadt-holders, the doges, the archons, or the 
kings of Lacedaemon." He expresses his profound dis- 
trust of self-government in these words : " The proposi- 
tion that the people are the best keepers of their own lib- 
erties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they 
are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, 
or will, as a political body. Individuals have conquered 
themselves; nations and large bodies never.'" In a letter 
to his democratic cousin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, in 
a few inadvertent words, betrays his feelings towards pop- 
ular liberty. Samuel Adams had advanced the proposi- 
tion that the love of liberty is interwoven in the soul of 
man. John Adams, candidate for popular favor, replied: 
" So it is, according to La Fontaine, in that of a wolf." ' 
Late in life, John Adams said that his political downfall 
was largely due to the writings of Philip Freneau.* He 
would more justly have attributed his retirement to his 
own writings. 

When we come to Washington's first cabinet we find a 
house divided against itself. Relying upon his own vast 
authority and the rectitude of his intentions, the president 
invited to assist him in governing, two men whose views 
upon government diverged as widely as possible. Thomas 
Jefiferson and Alexander Hamilton, by every principle and 
implication of their being, were unfitted to work together, 
and Washington's attempt at a mixed cabinet failed. In 
a short time the imperious and imperial Hamilton domi- 
nated Washington and the administration, and Jefiferson 
was forced to retire. 

What were Hamilton's views upon government? If he 
could have had his will, what form of government would 



■^ Works of John Adams, vol. i, p. 587. 

" Works of Samuel Adams. ' Works of John Adams. 



503] The Democratic Editor. 39 

have been instituted? What was the tendency of our gov- 
ernment when it was under his direction? To get an an- 
swer to this question, we may take the testimony first of 
a friend, then of an enemy. Gouverneur Morris, an inti- 
mate friend and co-worker in politics, said of Hamihon: 
" He hated repubHcan government because he confounded 
it with democratic government. One marked trait of the 
general's character was his pertinacious adherence to 
opinions once formed. He never failed on every occa- 
sion to advocate the excellence of and avow his attach- 
ment to monarchical government." ^° Thomas Jefferson 
corroborates this language by putting the following words 
in Hamilton's mouth; words, Jefferson avers, which were 
written down almost immediately after they were spoken: 
" I own it is my opinion, although I do not publish it in 
Dan and Beersheba, that the present government is not 
that which will answer the ends of society by giving sta- 
bility and protection to its rights, and that it will probably 
be expedient to go to the British form."^^ 

Hamilton's correspondence is replete with lugubrious 
apprehensions that the government by the people might 
fail." The people were to him " informe ingens, cui lumen 
ademptiim" " In a letter to Theodore Sedgwick he speaks 
of democracy as a virulent poison, that was threatening to 
destroy the life of the nation." In 1802, when he had been 
unhorsed and Jefferson was in fhe saddle, he writes to his 
old friend and fellow-aristocrat, Morris, bitterly com- 
plaining of his fate: "Mine is an odd destiny. I am still 
laboring to prop the frail and worthless fabric. Yet I have 
the murmurs of its friends no less than the curses of its 
foes for my reward. What can I do better than withdraw 
from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more 

" Sparks' Gouverneur Morris, Life and Works, vol. iii, p. 260. 
^^ Ford's " Jefiferson's Writings," vol. i, p. 169. 
"See Hamilton's Works, vol. v, p. 441; vol. vi, p. 54; vol. iii, 
p. 260. 

" Ibid., vol. vi, p. 540. " Ibid., vol. vi, p. 568. 



/ 



40 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [504 

that this American world was not made for me." ^^ At a 
banquet in New York, in reply to a toast Hamilton uttered 
these remarkable words: "Your people, sir, your people 
are a great beast." ^^ But enough of quotations. Every- 
body knows now as well as Jefferson knew in 1791 that 
Alexander Hamilton hated democracy and that he had 
little faith in the government that he had helped to estab- 
lish. 

It is of interest to note also what the lesser lights, what 
senators and representatives and diplomats of the time 
thought of democracy. The young and eloquent Fisher 
Ames, the confidential friend of Hamilton and a leader 
in the house of representatives, declared democracy to be 
the isthmus of a middle state, nothing in itself. Like death 
it was the dismal passport to a more dismal hereafter. 
He thought our nation began self-government without 
education for it. " Like negroes," he says, " freed after 
grown up to man's estate, we are incapable of learning 
and practicing the great art of taking care of ourselves." " 
He greets Hamilton's sympathetic ears with these words: 
" Our government is becoming a mere democracy which 
has never been tolerable or long tolerated." '^ And again, 
in an explosion of disgust and despair he cries: "Our 
country is too big for union, too sordid for patriotism, too 
democratic for liberty! What is to become of it, He who 
made it best knows." '^ 

Gouverneur Morris has answered for Hamilton and may 
now answer for himself on the subject of democratic gov- 
ernment. Writing from Paris to Rufus King he says: 
" The people, or rather the populace — a thing which, thank 
God, is unknown in America — are flattered with the idea 
that they are under no restraint except such as might be 

^^ Hamilton's Works, vol. vi, p. 530- 

^® Adams' History of the United States, vol. i, p. 85. 

" Works of Fisher Ames, vol. i, p. 224. 

^^ Hamilton's Works, vol. vi, p. 201. 

^® Ames' Works, vol. i, p. 327. 



505] The Democratic Editor. 41 

inspired by magistrates of their own choice." '° This 
haughty lieutenant of Hamilton's having narrowly escaped 
the fury of that same Parisian populace, wished to check 
the power of the people in his own country by a strong 
government. He believed that a national law should re- 
peal any state law, and was for a senate for life, appointed 
by the chief magistrate. The body should consist of men 
of wealth and of aristocratic spirit — one that would " lord 
it through pride." 

Theodore Sedgwick, speaker of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, had no faith in the manner of electing the 
president. ^^ John Jay, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 
doubted whether the people could long govern themselves 
in an " equal, uniform and orderly manner." " Oliver 
Wolcott, Comptroller of the Treasury, and successor of 
Hamilton as Secretary, believed that our system of gov- 
ernment would fail." Chauncey Goodrich, a leader in poli- 
tics wrote : " Our greatest danger is from the antagonism 
of levelism. What folly is it that has set the world agog 
to be all equal to French barbers?" George Cabot, sena- 
tor from Massachusetts, held the belief that " Democracy 
in its natural operation is the government of the worst." ^* 

Such was the faith, or rather lack of faith, of our fed- 
eral fathers. Such were the avowed opinions regarding 
self-government held by those who were administering the 
government, making its laws, conducting its diplomacy, 
pronouncing its justice, at the period when Freneau set 
up his National Gazette in Philadelphia. Washington 
warned the federal leaders against their monarchical no- 
tions, reminding them that it was but a step from think- 
ing to speaking and but another to acting.^^ And they did 



^° Life of Rufus King, vol. i, p. 432. 
^^ Hamilton's Works, vol. vi, p. 511. 

^^ Gill's " Administration of Washington and Adams," vol. i, p. 
390. 
=' Ibid., p. 88. '* Lodge's Cabot, p. 341. 

^° Sparks' " Life and Writings of Washington," vol. ix, p. 187. 



42 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [506 

act as far as prudence would permit. Hamilton tried to 
hedge Washington around " with a divinity that did befit 
a King." Titles and royal trappings were employed to 
dazzle and awe; measures were introduced into congress 
under Hamilton's doctrine of " implied powers " that made 
democrats like Maclay and Madison stand aghast. Ham- 
ilton and Hamiltonism ruled not only in the cabinet but in 
the legislature also. It was charged that the Treasurer 
in British fashion cracked his whip over congress,^ and 
" converted the legislature into a committee of sanction," 
and Washington himself was accused of " treading on the 
neck of the senate." " 

The organ upon which the federalists relied to make 
public opinion for their cause was John Fenno's " Gazette 
of the United States." This paper was started in New 
York but was moved to Philadelphia when the government 
was transferred to that place." Fenno was completely 
under Hamilton's control and the columns of his Gazette 
were filled with the monarchical notions of his patron. The 
following extract, taken from the writings of " Tablet " who 
contributed, every week, something upon the subject of 
government, will give an idea of the spirit of Fenno's 
paper: 

*' Take away thrones and crowns from among men and 
there will soon be an end of all dominion and justice. There 
must -be some adventitious properties infused into the 
government to give it energy and spirit, or the selfish, 
turbulent passions of mien can never be controlled. This 
has occasioned that artificial splendor and dignity that 
are to be found in the courts of many nations. The people 
of the United States may probably be induced to regard 



^® Mercer in a speech in congress said: " I have long remarked 
in this house that the executive, or rather the treasury department, 
was really the efficient legislature of the country. The House of 
Representatives is converted into a committee of sanction." 

" Maclay's Journal, p. 131. 

^^ Hudson's Journalism in America, p. 18. 



507] The Democratic Editor. 43 

and obey the laws without requiring the experiment of 
courts and titled monarchs. In proportion as we become 
populous and wealthy must the tone of the government 
be strengthened." ^^ 

Americans were invited to distrust their fitness for sov- 
ereignty, " for the experience of past ages proved that 
whenever the people have exercised in themselves the three 
powers, the democracy is immediately changed into an- 
archy. Violent orators agitate the multitude as the winds 
toss the waves, and the people agitated by demagogues 
have committed all excesses." Titles were upheld as the 
essential features of a vigorous government. The argu- 
ment for them was simple and cogent. There are differ- 
ences in men, in talent, in wealth, in position; therefore, 
there should be titles to designate these differences. 

Hamilton, the powerful patron of the Gazette, was the 
theme of its highest panegyric. " He is the highest jewel 
in Columbia's crown. As a pillar in the Federal building 
he seems to unite the solidity of the Doric order, the deli- 
cacy and elegance of the Ionic, and the towering beauty of 
the Corinthian." In return for this subserviency, Fenno, 
as we shall presently see, merely demanded cash. 

It was to furnish an antidote to the aristocratic and 
monarchical sentiments of Fenno's paper that Freneau's 
" National Gazette " was established, and the better we 
know the Gazette of the United States, the plainer does 
it become that an antidote was needed. The columns of 
Fenno's paper read like those of a journal of the court of 
St. James. A few paragraphs will illustrate : " The prin- 
cipal ladies of the city have with the earliest attention and 
respect paid their devoirs to the amiable consort of our 
beloved president, namely, the Lady of his Excellency, the 
Governor, Lady Stirling, Lady Mary Watts, Lady Kitty 
Duer, La Marchioness de Breham, the ladies of the Most 
Honorable Mr. Layton, the Most Honorable Mr. Dalton, 

^® Gazette of the United States, March, 1790. 



44 J The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [508 

the Mayoress, Mrs. Livingston of Clermont, Lady Temple, 
Madam de la Forest, Mrs. Houston, Mrs. Griffin, the Miss 
Bayards and a great number of other respectable charac- 
ters." 

Again: ''We are informed that the President, His Ex- 
cellency, the Vice-President, His Excellency, the Governor 
of this State, and many other personages will be present 
at the theatre this evening." 

Again: ''The Most Honorable Morris and Lady at- 
tended the theatre last evening." 

Such royal gibberish as this could not be reasoned with 
and Freneau did not attempt to reason with it, but he 
drove it out of Fenno's paper and out of the United States. 
He caused it to be laughed at, and that it could not en- 
dure. A bit of horse-play like the following was far more 
effective than any amount of abstraction could have been: 
— The writer, in imagination goes ahead of the time ten 
years and gives a page of news for the year 1801 — 

" On Monday last arrived in this city in perfect health, His Most 
Serene Highness the Protector of the United States, who on 
Wednesday next will review the regular troops which compose the 
garrison." 

" Yesterday came on before the circuit court of the Protector, the 
trial of James Barefoot, laborer, for carelessly treading on the 
great toe of My Lord Ohio. The defendant was found guilty, 
but as the offense appeared quite accidental, and his lordship had 
already inflicted on him fifty lashes, the court fined him only 100 
pounds and ordered him to be imprisoned six months. Consider- 
ing the blood and rank of the prosecutor, the humanity of the 
sentence cannot be too highly extolled. His lordship's toe is in 
a fair way of recovery, although one of his physicians thinks the 
nail is in danger." 

" Yesterday was capitally convicted by a majority of the jury, 
John Misprision, for high treason, for lying with the mistress of 
the Protector's second son, the duke of Erie. Great efforts will be 
made to obtain a pardon, but it is feared that the enormity of the 
offense, with a suspicion of its being the third or fourth time he 
has taken this liberty with his Grace, will prevent their desired 
efifect." 

" Sunday last, being the birthday of the Protector's lady, was 
celebrated in this city with becoming attention. No divine service 
was performed. The levee of her Highness was remarkably 



509] The Democratic Editor. 45 

crowded. She looked uncommonly cheerful considering it is the 
ninth month of her pregnancy. In the evening the theatre was 
unusually brilliant in expectation of her Highness's company, who 
for the reason just mentioned was obliged to forego the pleasure." 

" It is said that Lady Champlaine, a maid of honor to her High- 
ness the Protectoress, has had an intrigue with the Duchess of 
Rye's footman." 

" To remedy the inconveniences attending the election on the 
death of every protector, a bill will be brought in at the next 
session of Congress to make the ofifice hereditary, and to increase 
his annual revenue from five hundred thousand to one million of 
dollars. It is certainly impossible for his Highness to support 
the dignity of his high station upon his present small allowance." 

" The hereditary council will meet in the future at the new 
palace in Philadelphia. This superb edifice cost the moderate sum 
of six hundred thousand dollars, ten cents and five mills, which 
exceeded the calculations of the first lord of the Treasury only 
by two dollars, three cents and one mill." 

" A few copies of the act to restrain the freedom of press may 
be had at this office." 

Monarchy was not the only thing the National Gazette 
abhorred. Freneau, as a life-long democrat and consistent 
whig, detested the avowed principles of the federal party 
and there was no love in his heart for its leader, Alexan- 
der Hamilton. Hamilton was therefore singled out and 
made the principal target for the anti-federal arrows that 
sped from Freneau's bow. It was upon the appearance of 
Hamilton's report on manufactures that Freneau's career 
as a publicist began. The Secretary of the Treasury an- 
nounced the startling doctrine that it was the unquestion- 
able meaning of the constitution that Congress had power 
to provide for any object that concerned the general wel- 
fare. The phrase " general welfare," he contended, was 
susceptible neither of specification nor of definition. Every 
object which in its operations extends throughout the 
union concerns the general welfare and it was left to the 
discretion of the National Legislature to decide what shall 
be regarded as concerning the general welfare. The Sec- 
retary entertained no doubts that whatever concerned 
education, agriculture, manufacturing, or commerce was 
within the sphere of the action of the National Govern- 
ment. 



46 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [510 

Freneau, as a champion of strict construction, swooped 
down upon the doctrine of " implied power " with savage 
talons. " Is there," the Gazette asks, '' any object for 
which money is not necessary, or any object for which 
money may not be applied and brought under the object of 
congress? Under such a construction of the power of 
congress, what is to become of the word constitutional? 
Nothing henceforth would be unconstitutional. It would 
be the easiest thing in the world to conceive that religion 
is a matter of the general welfare; and then an ecclesiasti- 
cal establishment supported by government would quickly 
follow. Besides, such a doctrine knocks down every 
boundary worth contending for between the general gov- 
ernment and the state government. This doctrine of non- 
specification and non-limitation of the power of the consti- 
tution was subversive of liberty." "" The Secretary is 
charged with bad faith in attempting to promulgate such 
ideas. He is reminded that when he urged the adoption 
of the constitution, he taught the people that usurpation 
was not to be apprehended; that construction by implica- 
tion was impossible, that the states had nothing to fear. 
Now, by a little refinement in politics, and by the legerde- 
main of fiscal operations, he was about to do all that he 
had promised would not and could not be done. The fund- 
ing scheme, the bank scheme, the excise, were all contrary 
to himself, the constitution and American freedom. 

Hamilton was unfitted by nature to brook opposition, 
and he met the opposition of Freneau in a most unfortu- 
nate manner. At first he left his defense in the hands of 
his editor Fenno, but Fenno was a heavy fellow and could 
do little but rave. He hurled invective against any who 
should dare to criticize a measure of government. The 
National Gazette, he said was the vehicle of party Spleen 
and the opponent of the principles of order, virtue and re- 
Hgion;'" its editor was a "wretch," "a spaniel," "a fawn- 

^° National Gazette, 1792. 

^^ Gazette of the United States, Aug. 2, 1792. 



511] The Democratic Editor. 47 

ing parasite," *' a black-guard," ** a grumbletonian," " a 
crack brain," " a Bedlamite," *' a jackal of mobocracy," " a 
salamander." Freneau reprinted in his own paper these 
courtly epithets, and kept calm. A few lines of doggerel 
was all the reply he would vouchsafe to his enraged ad- 
versary. 

Since the day I attempted to print a gazette 

This Shylock-Ap-Shenkin does nothing but fret; 

Now preaching and screeching, then nibbling and scribbling 

Remarking and barking and whining and pining 

And still in a pet, 
From morning 'till night with my humble Gazette. 

Instead of whole columns our page to abuse, 
Your readers would rather be treated with news; 
While wars are a-brewing, and kingdoms undoing. 
While monarchs are falling, and princesses squalling, 
While France is reforming, and Irishmen storming — 
In a glare of such splendor, what folly to fret 
At so humble a thing as a poet's Gazette. 

One Printer for Congress (some think) is enough 
To flatter and lie, to palaver and pufif, 
To preach up in favor of monarchs and titles, 
And garters and ribbands to prey on our vitals. 

To criticise government and governors seemed to him a 
perfectly legitimate act and he exercised this right with- 
out any great perturbations of conscience. A squib from 
his paper furnishes the basis of a philosophy for the free- 
dom of press: 

" Free government in any country naturally urges by impercepti- 
ble advances to tyranny," unless corrected by the vigilance of the 
people. Nothing but the perpetual jealousy of the governed has 
ever been found effectual against the machination of ambition. 
When this jealousy does not exist in some reasonable degree the 
saddle is soon placed upon the backs of the people and occupied 
by a succession of tyrants. There never was a government that 
had not its flatterers whose incense of adulation is always in 
readiness to be offered at the shrine of power, and whose abilities 
are prostituted to cover the abuse of office. Monarchies it is well 
known owe no small share of their disability to such support. 
Republics ought to be above it." ^ 

'^ National Gazette, 1791. 



48 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [512 

But it must not be inferred that Freneau abused the lib- 
erty of the press. The National Gazette was not a scur- 
rilous or libellous sheet. It has an unsavory reputation in 
history, but we shall see before we have finished, that it 
does not deserve such a reputation, that scurrility and slan- 
der are not a feature of its pages. It was called atheistical 
and subversive of religion and morals, not because it de- 
nied the existence of God or attacked religion, for it let 
such subjects severely alone, but because it advocated 
democratic principles. In those days if a man was a 
democrat he was an atheist, and that was all there was 
to it. Compared with the Daily Advertiser, a republican 
contemporary, or with Fenno's paper, the National Ga- 
zette was a mild and decent sheet. The fear and hatred 
that it won for itself arose from the ability with which it 
was edited. It was supported by the best talent of the 
age. Hugh Brackenridge, Freneau's classmate at col- 
lege, now eminent as a jurist, sympathized with the aims 
of the paper and contributed largely to its success by writ- 
ing for its columns.^ James Madison worked for it, 
talked for it, and wrote for it.^* Jefiferson could not have 
been more interested in it if his political life had depended 
upon its success. He was always writing about it to his 
friends, calling attention to its merits, and drumming up 
subscribers and subscriptions. He kept Freneau sup- 
plied with foreign newspapers, and thus enabled him to 
make his paper the source of the fullest information re- 
specting the mighty movements and triumphs of democ- 
racy in Europe. By good management on the part of the 

'^ Brackenridge, Francis Hopkinson, and Freneau are admitted 
by critics to be the three greatest American prose writers of the 
eighteenth century. Freneau's prose writing is characterized by 
Moses Coit Tyler as " delightful, easy, sinewy, touched with a 
delicate humor, crisp and keen edged." Lit. Hist. American 
Revolution, vol, ii, 275. 

'* " I used occasionally to throw in an article with a view chiefly 
to contrast the monarchical spirit which characterized Fenno's 
paper." Randall's " Thomas Jefferson," vol. ii, p. 74. 



513] The Democratic Editor. 49 

editor and his friends, the paper prospered and became the 
power it was sought to make it. In May, 1792, Freneau 
pubHshed the following card in his paper: " Upward of six 
months being elapsed since the pubhcation of this paper, 
and the subscriptions having succeeded beyond the editor's 
most sanguine expectations, he now begs leave to solicit 
the attention of the people of the United States to a pub- 
lication which he trusts will at all times be found truly 
republican in its principles and tendency." 

The chief business of the Gazette was to destroy Hamil- 
ton, the one man in whom the hopes of the federalists lay. 
That the Secretary of the Treasury was the head and front 
of the federal party was clearly recognized by Jefiferson. 
" Hamilton is really a colossus to the anti-republicans," he 
writes to Madison. '' Without numbers he is a host with- 
in himself. When he comes forward there is nobody but 
yourself who can meet him. For God's sake take up your 
pen and give him a fundamental reply.'"' Freneau, after 
the manner of editors generally, did not concern himself 
deeply about " fundamental replies." His plan was to 
render Hamilton and his schemes odious and unpopular. 
f'Every utterance, every report, every recommendation of 
the Secretary was construed as having but one ultimate 
aim — the overthrow of the constitution and the establish- 
ment of a monarciiy. His funding system, his national 
bank, his excise law, his love of titles, his advocacy of a 
perpetual public debt, his loose-construction notions, were 
all of the same cloth. ) If you want rules for the conversion 
of a limited republic into an absolute monarchy, said 
Freneau, here they are: 

1. Get rid of constitutional shackles. 

2. Confer titles of rank. If the principal magistrate should be 
particularly venerable in the eyes of the people take advantage of 
that fortunate circumstance. 

3. If the principal magistrate is averse to titles, persevere in 
indoctrinating the people with the idea. Time will gain it respect. 

^° Jefferson's Works, vol. iv, p. 122. 
36 



50 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [514 

4. Harp incessantly upon the dangers of the mob. 

5. Let the great nostrum be a perpetual public debt. If a debt 
is not at hand assume one, and then swell it and stretch it in every 
possible way. 

6. Interest the legislators in speculation and speculators in 
legislation. 

7. Establish an incorporated bank by which those who are to 
inherit the kingdom that is preparing for them may be enriched. 

8. Arrogate all power to the general government under the 
phrase " general welfare." 

9. Secure a rich manufacturing class by making laws in their 
interests. 

ID. Create a standing army. 
II. Take England as a model. 

Hamilton's doctrine that a public debt is a public bless- 
ing was resisted by the National Gazette with bull-dog 
ferocity. " Brutus," who fulminated for months against 
the funding system ably supported these charges: 

1. The funding system threw $50,000,000 into the hands of the 
wealthy. 

2. It combined the money interest with the monopoly of the 
NationM Bank. 

3. By its excise and impost ofifsprings it swallowed up by future 
payments the last resource of the country. 

4. The certificates of indebtedness fell into the hands of specula- 
tors and foreigners. 

5. It had diverted capital from its proper channels and turned it 
into speculation. 

6. It created an immense body of revenue officials from the 
Secretary down to the tide-waiter, all bound together by common 
interests. 

The editor's compassion was deeply moved for the sol- 
dier of the revolution who had been paid by certificates 
of indebtedness which had passed out of his hands at a 
discount into the hands of speculators, and which by Ham- 
ilton's law, had appreciated to several times their value. 
The theme caused the editor to drop into rhyme : 

Public debts are public curses 

In soldiers' hands; there nothing worse is! 

In speculators' hands increasing, 

A public debt's a public blessing. 



515] The Democratic Editor. 51 

Jonathan Pindar, who is Philip Freneau'" in disguise, 
appears before Hamilton and other magnates as candi- 
date for the position of poet-laureate. To further his 
chances of appointment he promised to swear — 

The nation's debt's a blessing vast, 
Which far and wide its general influence sheds, 
From whence Pactolian streams descend so fast, 
On their — id est — the speculators' heads. 

That to increase this blessing and entail 
To future time its influence benign, 
New loans from foreign nations cannot fail 
While standing armies clinch the grand design. 

That taxes are no burthen to the rich. 
That they alone to labor drive the poor — 
The lazy rogues would neither plow nor ditch, 
Unless to keep the sheriff from the door. 

Freneau was a master of irony and frequently subjected 
Hamilton's sensitive nerves to this species of wit. The fol- 
lowing piece is -a sample of the fine satire that was con- 
stantly directed against the federalists and their chief: 

A NEW POLITICAL CREED. 

" Whoever would Hve peaceably in Philadelphia, above all 
things it is necessary that he hold the federal faith and the federal 
faith is this, that there are two governing powers in this country, 
both equal and yet one superior; which faith unless one keep 
undefiledly without doubt he shall be abused everlastingly. The 
Briton is superior to the American and the American is superior 
to the Briton, and yet they are equal and the Briton shall govern 
the American. 

" The Briton while here is commanded to obey the American 
and yet the American ought to obey the Briton; and yet they 
ought not both to be obedient. For there is one dominion nominal 
of the American and another dominion real of the Briton. And 
yet there are not two dominions but only one dominion. 

" The American was created for the Briton and the Briton for 
the American, and yet the American shall be a slave to the Briton 
and the Briton the tyrant of the American. 

^° Jefferson says these " Probationary leaders," as they were 
called, were written by St. George Tucker and not by Freneau. 
They were, at any rate, saddled on the editor. Ford's Writings 
of Thomas Jefferson, vol. vi, p. 328. 



_^^ The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [516 

" The Britons are of three denominations, and yet only of one 
soul, nature, and subsistence: The Irishman of infinite impudence; 
the Scotchman of cunning most inscrutable; and the Englishman 
of impertinence altogether insupportable. 

" For the true faith is that we believe and confess that the 
government is fallible, and infallible: Falhble in its republican 
nature; and infallible in its monarchical tendency; erring in its 
state individuality and unerring in its federal complexity. So that 
it is both fallible and infallible; yet it is not twain but one govern- 
ment only, as having consolidated all state dominion in order to 
rule with sway uncontrolled. This is the true federal faith, which 
except a man believe and practice faithfully, beyond all doubt he 
shall be cursed perpetually." 

Such reading was exceedingly painful to a proud and 
highly organized nature like Hamilton's. Fenno defended 
the Secretary as best he could, but Fenno was no match 
for Freneau. The National Gazette continued to pour 
forth its efifective broadsides until Hamilton's patience 
gave way and he determined to break a lance in his own 
behalf. Freneau he affected to despise. In the editor and 
clerk who met his eyes daily in the office of government he 
saw only the servile instrument of Thomas Jefferson. 
Without evidence and without reason he cherished the no- 
tion that the National Gazette had been established by the 
Secretary of State, and that it was supported and directed 
by him, and that Freneau was a man of straw. With vis- 
ion blurred and his facts all tangled, Hamilton rushed into 
print with an attack upon Jefferson. The chastisement, 
of course, had to be administered over Freneau's shoul- 
ders. In July, 1792, there appeared in Fenno's Gazette 
the following communication: 

Mr. Fenno : 

The editor of the National Gazette receives a salary from the 
government. Quaere: Whether this salary is paid for translations 
or for publications the design of which is to villify those to whom 
the voice of the people has committed the administration of our 
public affairs, — to oppose the measures of government and by 
false insinuation to disturb the public peace? 

In common life it is thought ungrateful for a man to bite the 
hand that puts bread in his mouth, but if the man is hired to do 
it, the case is altered. T. L. 



517] The Democratic Editor. 53 

'' T. L." was Alexander Hamilton. Freneau paid but 
little attention to the squib, doubtless because he did not 
suspect its high authority. He re-printed it in his paper 
and said it was beneath notice, and propounded this query 
by way of retort: "Whether a man who receives a small 
stipend for services rendered as French Translator to the 
Department of State and as editor of a free newspaper ad- 
mits into his publication impartial strictures on the pro- 
ceedings of the government, is not more likely to act an 
honest and disinterested part toward the public than a 
vile sycophant who, obtaining emoluments from the gov- 
ernment far more lucrative than the salary alluded to, 
finds his interest in attempting to poison the mind of the 
people by propagating and disseminating principles and 
sentiments utterly subversive of the true interests of the 
country and by flattering and recommending every and 
any measure of government, however pernicious and de- 
structive its tendency might be to the great body of the 
people? " The world is then called upon to judge between 
the motives of Freneau and those of Fenno." 

The world probably took very little interest in the mo- 
tives of either of the editors, yet it did take the greatest 
interest in the names that were soon involved in the con- 
troversy that ensued. A struggle between Hamilton and 
Jefferson was fraught with issues of the most profound 
significance. The triumph of Hamilton meant conserva- 
tism and the rule of the classes in America; the triumph 
of Jefferson meant radicalism and the rule of the masses. 
To be precise and just, we may say that Hamiltonism 
meant a strong central government administered in the 
English spirit, while Jefifersonism meant a light and easy 
central government that would respond readily to the will 
of the populace. Both Jefferson and Hamilton honestly 
wished to avoid a quarrel, yet a conflict between them was 
inevitable. Hamilton by a few inopportune strokes of the 

^^ National Gazette, July, 1792. 



54 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [518 

pen in a moment of irritation precipitated the contest. In 
reply to Freneau's retort he wrote for Fenno's paper, over 
the signature " An American," a letter that made peace no 
longer possible. 

" Mr. Freneau," he said in this letter — ^thinking and car- 
ing nothing about Freneau — " Mr. Freneau should not 
escape with the plea that his hostility toward the measures 
of government was only a mark of independence and dis- 
interestedness." The whole truth in regard to the National 
Gazette should be known. That truth for the enlighten- 
ment of the world and the discomfiture of Jefferson is then 
set forth in these paragraphs: 

" Mr. Freneau, before he came to Philadelphia, was em- 
ployed by Childs and Swaine, printers of the Daily Adver- 
tiser, in New York, in the capacity of editor or superintend- 
ent. A paper more devoted to the views of a certain party, 
of which Mr. Jefferson is the head than any to be found 
in this city was wanted. Mr. . Freneau was thought a fit 
instrument; a negotiation was opened with him which 
ended in the establishment of the National Gazette under 
his direction. 

" Mr. Freneau came here at once editor of the National 
Gazette and clerk for foreign languages in the department 
of Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State; an experiment some- 
what new in the history of political manoeuvres in this 
country; a nezvspaper instituted by a public oificer and the 
editor of it regularly pensioned with the public money in 
the disposal of that officer, an example which could not 
have been set by the head of any other department with- 
out having long since been rung through the United States. 
[By the National Gazette, of course.] 

" Mr. Freneau is not, then, as he would have it sup- 
posed, the independent editor of a newspaper who though 
receiving a salary from the government has firmness 
enough to express its maladministration; he is the faith- 
ful and devoted servant of the head of a party from whose 
hands he receives the boon. The whole complexion of 



519] The Democratic Editor. 55 

this paper exhibits a decisive internal evidence of the in- 
fluence of that patronage under which he acts. Whether 
the services rendered are equivalent to the compensation 
he receives is best known to his employer and himself; 
there is, however, some room for doubt. It is well known 
that his employer is himself well acquainted with the 
French language, the only one of which Mr. Freneau is 
the translator and it may be a question how often his aid 
is necessary. 

" It is somewhat singular too, that a man acquainted 
with but one language, engaged in an occupation which it 
may be presumed demands his whole attention — the editor 
of a newspaper — should be the person selected as the 
clerk for foreign languages in the department of the United 
States for foreign afifairs. Could no person be found ac- 
quainted with more than one foreign language? and who in 
so confidential a trust could have been regularly attached 
to, in the constant employ of the department and imme- 
diately under the eye of the head of it? "'* 

Hamilton then turns from Freneau to Jefiferson and 
hauls that gentleman over the coals for divers political 
iniquities. At the time of Hamilton's attacks, Jefiferson 
was in Virginia designing geometrical wheelbarrows and 
mould-boards of least resistance. He does not seem to 
have entered into the melee but was content to let Freneau 
and Hamilton fight it out for themselves. Many writers 
rushed to his defense, but his own hand was stayed, and 
the hand of Freneau even is not apparent in the replies to 
Hamilton's attack. Moreover the champions of Jefferson 
had their articles printed not in the National Gazette but 
in the Daily Advertiser of Philadelphia. 

If the reader has recalled the facts connected with Fre- 
neau's coming to Philadelphia he will have seen that Ham- 
ilton's charges were nothing more than assumptions. 
These charges Freneau met in a characteristic way. He 



^* Gazette of the United States, Aug., 1792. 



56 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [520 

went before the Mayor of Philadelphia and duly swore: 
" That no negotiation was ever opened with him by 
Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State for the establishment 
or institution of the National Gazette; that the deponent's 
coming to the city of Philadelphia as a publisher of a news- 
paper was at no time urged, advised or influenced by the 
above officer, but that it was his own voluntary act; that 
the Gazette or the Editor thereof was never directed, con- 
trolled or attempted to be influenced in any manner either 
by the Secretary or any of his friends; that not a line was 
ever directly or indirectly written, dictated or composed for 
it by that officer, but that the editor had consulted his own 
judgment alone in the conducting of it — free, unfettered 
and uninfluenced.' ' ^* 

This solemn and explicit denial by a man whose char- 
acter was above reproach would have caused a less pertina- 
cious and a more sagacious man than Hamilton to let the 
matter drop. But his feelings now had the whip hand of 
his judgment and he could not stop. He rushed further 
into the blind encounter. He now came forward with the 
insinuation that Freneau had sworn to a lie. This he said, 
would be just what a pensioned tool would do. How, he 
would like to know, was Mr. Freneau able to swear that 
Mr. Jefferson never wrote a line for his paper. No editor 
who does not himself write every line for his paper can 
make any such affirmation as that. Facts were against 
Mr. Freneau. He then opens his artillery of facts : 

" It is a fact, Mr. Freneau, that you receive a salary as clerk for 
foreign languages, and yet you can translate but one language." 

" It is a fact that you left New York to become the editor of the 
National Gazette." 

" It is a fact that your appointment was antecedent to the com- 
mencement of your paper." *° 

" It is a fact that Mr. Jefferson was in the beginning opposed 
to the constitution." 

^^ Gazette of the United States, Aug., 1792. 

*° Freneau's appointment was made Aug. 3, 1791. The first num- 
ber of the Gazette appeared Oct. 31, 1791. 



521] The Democratic Editor. 57 

" It is a fact that that officer arraigns the principal measures of 
government." 

" From these facts the inferences which are to be drawn are 
irresistible. If you had previously been the conductor of a news- 
paper in this city — if your appointment had been any considerable 
time subsequent to the institution of your paper, there might have 
been some room for subterfuge. But as matters stand you have 
no possible escape." 

" It makes no difference, Mr. Freneau, whether there was a pre- 
liminary negotiation or not; there are many facts to presuppose 
that such a negotiation did occur, and these facts will be brought 
out, sir, if scruples of family connection or the dread of party 
resentment do not forbid. And the evidence adduced will be 
incontestable. Any honest man must conclude that the relations 
that subsist between you and Mr. Jefferson are indelicate, unfit, 
and suspicious. Your apology that the meagre compensation 
provided renders it necessary for the translator to engage in some 
other occupation is inadmissible, for a competent clerk could have 
been employed at a full salary, and if his work as a translator did 
not occupy all this time, he could have used his surplus time at 
some other kind of work in the department. If there had been 
difficulty in finding sUch a man, undoubtedly, you, the editor of a 
newspaper should not have been selected, and the fact that you 
were selected is a proof of sinister design. The fact that your 
predecessor, Mr. Pintard, received but two hundred and fifty 
dollars a year and was a newspaper man is not to the point; the 
employment of that gentleman was a natural consequence of a 
particular situation. These strictures involve you, Mr. Freneau, 
but it is confessed that they are aimed at a character of greater 
importance in the community." ^ 

Nothing could be more flimsy and illogical than the 
above, and it is strange that an intellect like Hamilton's 
should have expressed itself in such a way. It was due 
doubtless to the fact that he had begun the controversy in 
a mental fog and could not find his way out. He had got 
the cart before the horse. On Aug. ii, 1792, he made the 
charge that Madison had conducted an unworthy negotia- 
tion with Freneau, and two days after wrote to Elias Bou- 
dinot for an authentication of the charge. "If I, recollect 
right," Hamilton says to Boudinot, '' you told me, that 
this, if necessary, could be done; and if practicable it is of 

*^ Gazette of the United States, Aug., 1792; Hamilton's Works, 
vol. V, p. 518. 



58 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [522 

real importance that it should be done. It will confound 
and put down a man who is continually machinating 
against public happiness." (Not Freneau but Jefferson is 
meant.) 

" You will oblige me in the most particular manner by 
obtaining and forwarding to me without delay the par- 
ticulars of all the steps taken by Mr. Madison — the when 
and the where — with the liberty to use the name of the 
informant. His aiUdavit to the facts, if obtainable would 
be of infinite value." 

But behold! '* the when and the where" and the " affi- 
davit of infinite value," to meet Freneau's affidavit did not 
materialize. Boudinot informs him that there is no direct 
evidence of a negotiation available; that the gentleman 
upon whom he relied for information was more attached 
to Freneau than he had supposed and would say nothing; 
that there was nothing but hearsay upon which to base 
the charge, although he (Boudinot) would do all he could 
to get together some evidence.*^ Hamilton also wrote to 
Jonathan Dayton for " the when and the where " of the al- 
leged negotiation, but that gentleman, although desirous 
of frustrating the designs of a particular party, could not 
comply with his request. 

Freneau called for the proof that was promised, declin- 
ing to answer charges of a personal nature unless they 
were supported by the declarations of persons. But proof 
there was none, and Hamilton was driven to the miserable 
confession " that the secret intentions of men being in the 
repositories of their own breasts it rarely happens and is 
therefore not to be expected that direct and positive proof 
of them can be adduced. Presumptive facts and circum- 
stances must afford the evidence." ^ 

After this graceless acknowledgment that his charges 
against Freneau were without proof, Hamilton spared the 



Hamilton's Works, vol. v, p. 520. 
Parton's Life of Jefferson, p. 447. 



523] The Democratic Editor. 59 

editor and applied his bad names to Jefferson direct. The 
bringing of Freneau into this quarrel was most unfortunate 
to Hamilton's cause and reputation. He stood before the 
country convicted of an unwarranted attempt to injure an 
innocent private citizen in order that he might punish a 
political enemy. And the country did not forgive him. 
*' He lost something," says Parton, " which is of no value 
to an anonymous writer in a presidential campaign, but is 
of immense value to a public man — WEIGHT." His 
query in Fenno's paper calling in question Freneau's honor 
was the beginning of his political downfall. Besides, view- 
ed from the standpoint of private morality, Hamilton's at- 
tack upon Freneau was very low, for he was himself doing 
precisely what he accused Jefferson of doing. He was 
supporting a partisan paper by means of the patronage of 
his department. Freneau did not fail to bring out the fact 
that Fenno was exclusive printer to the treasury depart- 
ment, and that his emoluments in that direction were 
twenty-five hundred dollars per annum."" And candid his- 
tory brings out another fact still more damaging, to wit, 
that Fenno was at times the direct beneficiary of Hamil- 
ton's private purse. Not long after the attack upon the 
editor of the National Gazette, Fenno wrote to Hamilton 
stating that he was in financial straits and that if the hand 
of benevolence and patriotism were not speedily extended 
to him his career as a printer would be over.*^ Hamilton 
upon the receipt of the letter wrote to his friend Rufus 
King as follows: 

"My Dear Sir: 

*' Inclosed is a letter just received from poor Fenno. 
It speaks for itself. 

" If you can without delay raise looo dollars in New 
York, I will endeavor to raise another thousand at Phila- 



National Gazette, Sept., 1793. 
Life of Rufus King, vol. x, p. 502. 



60 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [524 

delphia. If this cannot be done we must lose his services 
and he will be the victim of his honest public spirit. 
" Yours truly, 

''A. Hamilton." 

" Poor Fenno " continued to publish his Gazette, hence 
it is tolerably certain that the " hand of benevolence and 
patriotism " was in some way extended. 

Either a consciousness of his innocence or his stubborn 
nature prevented Freneau from offering an elaborate de- 
fense against Hamilton's charges. His biographer there- 
fore is not called upon to dwell long upon his exculpation. 
As we have seen, Jefferson kept out of the quarrel. His 
name as far as possible was kept out of the National Ga- 
zette. He was attacked in Fenno's paper and defended in 
the Daily American Advertiser, a paper which was as vio- 
lent in its republicanism as Freneau's paper. In one of 
the articles in the Advertiser in behalf of Jefferson is the 
following incidental defense of Freneau: 

" Mr. Freneau has the following well-authenticated claim for the 
office of Translator. A native of the Middle States, he had been 
liberally educated at Princeton. To an accurate knowledge and a 
refined taste in the English language, he had added a similar 
acquirement in the French, the nation with whom we have the 
most intimate relations and whose language has become in a great 
measure throughout Europe the general medium of political nego- 
tiation. Through life his morals were without blemish and his 
conduct in the revolution was that of a sound whig and republican. 
Perhaps his sufferings as a prisoner of war may have excited 
additional sympathy in his favor. [In the matter of getting an 
appointment.] To what trait in his character, to what defect in 
his qualification does "American" [Hamilton] object? To his 
occupation? and if so, to occupations in general or to printing in 
particular? The low rate of pay made it necessary to get one 
engaged in some other business. Is printing less honorable, less 
beneficial to mankind than all others? Does " American " come 
forward to traduce it and lessen it? Vain and unworthy effort! 
Whether he had already set up a press or was about to set up one, 
— for " American " can have it either way — is a matter of indiffer- 
ence. He could not take the clerkship without the aid of the press. 
The objection in the point of influence, if the characters in question 
were capable of it, is scarcely worthy of notice. The office was 
created by law and a salary attached to it. If the person appointed 



525] The Democratic Editor. 61 

performs these duties, what other claim can the principal have 
upon him? Degraded indeed would be the condition of a free- 
man, if an appointment to an office carried with it low subservience 
to the Superior. It is treasonable to infer that any such sub- 
servience exists between a superior and his subordinate and a 
great injustice has been done both Jefferson and Freneau by 
' American.' " *® 

We cannot let the Hamilton-Freneau-Jefferson quarrel 
drop without giving Jefferson's version of the affair. 
Washington had called his two secretaries to task for their 
bickerings and implored them in the name of the country 
to cease from their strife. Jefferson answered at consid- 
erable length the charge that he had set up the National 
Gazette and that Freneau was his hireling: 

" While the government was at New York I was applied to on 
behalf of Freneau to know if there was any place within, my 
department to which he could be appointed. I answered there 
were but four clerkships, all of which I found full and continued 
without any change. When we removed to Philadelphia, Mr. 
Pintard, the translating clerk, did not choose to remove with us. 
His office then became vacant. I was again applied to there for 
Freneau and had no hesitation to promise the clerkship to him. 
I cannot recollect whether it was at the same time or afterwards, 
that I was told he had a thought of setting up a paper there.*^ But 
whether then or afterwards, I considered it a circumstance of 
some value, as it might enable me to do what I had long wished 
to have done, that is to have the material parts of the Leyden 
Gazette brought under your eye, and that of the public, in order 
to possess yourself and them of a juster view of the affairs of 
Europe, than could be obtained from any other public source. 
This I had ineffectually attem.pted through the press of Mr. Fenno, 
while in New York, selecting and translating passages myself at 
first, then having it done by Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, 
but they found their way too slowly into Fenno's paper. Mr. 
Bache essayed it for me in Philadelphia, but his being a daily 
paper did not circulate sufficiently in other states. He even tried, 
at my request, the plan of a weekly paper of recapitulation from 
his daily paper, on hopes it might go into the other States, but 
in this, too, we failed. Freneau as translating clerk and the 

*" American Daily Advertiser, Oct., 1792. 

*^ We cannot gather from the correspondence whether it was 
before or afterwards. The offer was made Feb. 28, 1791. A letter 
from Madison, May, 1791, reads as if Jefferson was aware of 
Freneau's intention. 



62 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [526 

printer of a periodical paper likely to circulate through the states 
(uniting in one person the parts of Pintard and Fenno) revived 
my hopes that they could at length be effected. On the establish- 
ment of his paper, therefore, I furnished him with the Leyden 
Gazettes with an expression of my wish that he could always 
translate and publish the material intelligence they contained, and 
have continued to furnish them from time to time as regularly as 
I have received them. But as to any other direction or any indica- 
tion of my wish how his press should be conducted, what sort of 
intelligence he should give, what essays encourage, I can protest in 
the presence of Heaven that I never did by myself or any other, 
or indirectly say a syllable nor attempt any kind of influence. I can 
further protest in the same awful presence, that I never did by 
myself or any other, directly or indirectly write, dictate, or procure 
any one sentence or sentiment to be inserted in his or any other 
gazette, to which m,y name was not affixed or that of m.y office, 
I surely need not except here a thing so foreign to the present 
subject as a little paragraph about our Algerian captives, which I 
once put into Freneau's paper. 

" Freneau's proposition to publish a paper having been about 
the time that the writings of Publicola and the discourses of 
Davilla had a good deal excited the public attention, I took for 
granted from Freneau's character, which had been marked as that 
of a good whig, that he would give free place to pieces written 
against the aristocratical and monarchical principles these papers 
had inculcated. This having been in my mind, it is likely enough 
I may have expressed it in conversation with others, though I do 
not recollect that I did. To Freneau I think I could not, because 
I still had seen him but once and that was at a public table, at 
breakfast at Mrs. Elsworth's, as I passed through New York the 
last year. And I can safely declare that my expectations looked 
only to the chastisement of the aristocratical and monarchical 
writings, and not to any criticism on the proceedings of govern- 
ment. Colonel Hamilton can see no motive for any appointment 
but that of making a convenient partizan. But you, sir, who have 
received from me recommendations of a Rittenhouse, Barlow, 
Paine, will believe that talents and science are sufficient motives 
with me in appointments to which they are fitted, and that Freneau 
as a man of genius, might find a preference in my eye to be a 
translating clerk and make a good title to the little aids I could 
give him as the editor of a Gazette by procuring subscriptions to 
his paper as I did some before it appeared, and as I have done 
with pleasure for other men of genius. Col. Hamilton, alias 
* Plain Facts,' says that Freneau's salary began before he resided 
in Philadelphia. I do not know what quibble he may have in 
reserve on the word ' residence.' He may mean to include under 
that idea the removal of his family; for I believe he removed 
himself before his family did to Philadelphia. But no act of mine 
gave commencement to his salary before he so far took up his 



527] The Democratic Editor. 63 

abode in Philadelphia as to be sufficiently in readiness for his 
duties of his place. As to the merits or demerits of his paper 
they certainly concern me not. He and Fenno are rivals for the 
public favor. The one courts them by flattery, the other by 
censure, and I believe it will be admitted that the one has been as 
servile as the other severe. No government ought to be without 
censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will." *^ 

This solemn and semi-official history of the establish- 
ment of the National Gazette agrees perfectly with the 
facts as they have hitherto been related in these pages. It 
agrees with the account given by James Madison,** with 
the sworn statement of Freneau, and it must stand as true 
history until evidence is produced to shake it. Freneau 
was the independent editor of an independent paper. 

The charge of perjury with which Hamilton tried to 
blacken Freneau's character, aroused the resentment of 
the poet and excited the editor to the fullest exercise of 
his license. '° If the federalists had heretofore been 
scourged with whips, they were now scourged with scor- 
pions. Every phase of their policy was assailed in the Na- 
tional Gazette most bitterly, most fearlessly, and with a 
persistence that was as relentless as fate. The senate held 
its sessions with closed doors. The Gazette attacked these 
doors with a crow-bar. Appealing to Hamilton's " great 
beast " — the people — it says : 

A motion for opening the doors of the senate chamber has 
again been lost by a considerable majority — in defiance of instruc- 
tion, in defiance of your opinion, in defiance of every principle 

*^ Writings of Jefferson, vol. vi, pp. 106-108. 
*® Writings of Madison, vol. i, pp. 569-570. 

^" Fenno continued to cast discredit upon Freneau's oath. 
" Enquirer " wanted to know if Freneau took the oath reverently, 
if he kissed the holy evangel in a pious manner. The correspond- 
ent suspects that instead of kissing the Bible he saluted with 
reverence a copy of Jefferson's " Notes on Virginia." A doubting 
rhymester thus delivered himself: 

To many a line in humble prose 
Thy voice is wont to swear, 
And once to shame thy patron's foes 
Didst lie before the mayor. 
Gazette of the United States, Aug., 1792. 



64 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [528 

which gives security to free men. What means this conduct? 
Which expression does it carry strongest with it, contempt for 
you or tyranny? Are you freemen who ought to know the indi- 
vidual conduct of your legislators, or are you an inferior order 
of beings incapable of comprehending the sublimity of senatorial 
functions, and unworthy to be entrusted with their opinions? How 
are you to know the just from the unjust steward when they are 
covered with the mantle of concealment? Can there be any ques- 
tion of legislative import which freemen should not be acquainted 
with? What are you tO' expect when stewards of your household 
refuse to give account of their stewardship? Secrecy is necessary 
to design and a masque to treachery; honesty shrinks not from 
the public eye." 

" The Peers of America disdain to be seen by vulgar eyes, the 
music of their voices is harmony only for themselves and must 
not vibrate in the ravished ear of an ungrateful and unworthy 
multitude. Is there any congeniality excepting in the administra- 
tion, between the government of Great Britain and the government 
of the United States? The Senate supposes there is, and usurps 
the secret privileges of the House of Lords. Remember, my 
fellow citizens, that you are still freemen; let it be impressed upon 
your minds that you depend not upon your representatives but 
that they depend upon you, and let this truth be ever present to 
you, that secrecy in your representatives is a worm which will 
prey and fatten upon the vitals of your liberty.^^ 

Freneau could be trusted to keep the " truth ever pres- 
ent " before the mind of the public, and after little more 
than a year of agitation the doors of the senate were 
opened to the public and secrecy no longer preyed upon 
the vitals of liberty. His hostility to Hamilton's National 
Bank scheme was equally pronounced. To a " Truly 
Great Man " (Washington) he addresses these lines : 

George, on thy virtues often have I dwelt, 
And still the theme is grateful to mine ear, 
Thy gold let chemists ten times even melt 
From dross and base alloy they'll find it clear. 

Yet thou'rt a man — although perhaps, the first. 
But man at best is but a being frail; 
And since with error human nature's curst, 
I marvel not that thou shouldst sometimes fail. 

That thou hast long and nobly served the state 
The nation owns, and freely gives thee thanks, 
But, sir, whatever speculators prate. 
She gave thee not the power to establish BANKS. 

"' National Gazette, Feb., 1792. 



529] The Democratic Editor. 65 

Probably to no other influence was the final downfall of 
the National Bank more directly traceable than to the ha- 
tred for it which was inspired in the minds of the people 
by the National Gazette. Freneau was now the leading 
editor in America. He was the oracle for all editors of 
humble democratic sheets. In the south, where there 
were but few newspapers, it w^as the only paper that had a 
general circulation." The leaders of the republican party 
left no stone unturned to get it among the people, and the 
fifteen hundred copies of its circulation were sent where 
they would do the most good. In the small papers of the 
country extracts from it were published as coming from a 
sacred source. Examine a democratic paper of the time 
and the chances are that you will find in it a clipping from 
the National Gazette and when the extract is found, the 
chances are still great that it is an attack upon the National 
Bank." Public opinion was in a formative state when 
Freneau attacked the bank scheme, and the seeds of en- 
mity to it which he sowed fructified in its destruction. 

The strength of the paper, however, is to be found in 
its democracy and in its perpetual harping upon the theme 
of federal enmity to republican government and federalist 
love of monarchy. There may have been no intention in 
the minds of the federal leaders to abandon republican 
forms of government as soon as expedient, yet Freneau be- 
lieved there was and made the people believe there was; 
and that was all that was necessary for the success of 
democracy. 

Jefiferson, as we shall see, could not be induced even by 
Washington to forsake Freneau, and we are not surprised 
at his loyalty, for Freneau was a thorough Jefifersonian, 
and in the Gazette Jefferson's opinions were reflected as in 



^" In Virginia, in 1791, there were nine newspapers; in South 
Carolina, three; in North Carolina, two; and in Georgia, two. 
National Gazette, Nov., 1791. 

"^ One of the charges against the Gazette was that it was circu- 
lated in every state. National Gazette, March 27, 1792. 
37 



66 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [530 

a mirror. We can imagine the pleasure of the great demo- 
crat in the Httle sentiments from Paine and Rousseau which 
sparkled in the columns of the Gazette; or this morsel of 
an epitaph for the tomb of Frederick the Great: 

Here lies a king, his mortal journey done, 
Through life a tyrant to his fellow-man; 
Who bloody wreaths in bloody battles won — 
Nature's worst savage since the world began. °* 

In January, 1793, " Louis Capet lost his caput " — as the 
irreverent Boston Argus put it — and France was declared 
a republic. In May of the same year, citizen Genet, the 
embassador of the new republic after an almost triumphal 
journey northward from Charleston, arrived in the city of 
Philadelphia amid the roar of cannon and the acclamations 
of a noisy populace. War had just been declared by 
France against England and the ebullient minister was 
sent by his government to awaken the sympathy and se- 
cure the aid of America in behalf of France. His mission 
began with the brightest prospect of success. Farmers 
and merchants offered him provisions at a lower price 
than they would sell them to the agent of any other na- 
tion. Six hundred thousand barrels of flour were at his 
disposal."'' When he passed through a city, enthusiastic 
lovers of France crowded the avenues shouting for the lib- 
erty of the nation that had helped America to secure her 
own freedom. At Philadelphia three thousand went out to 
Dobb's Ferry to meet the representative of the sister re- 
public; while a counter demonstration, gotten up by the 
lovers of England, numbered barely three hundred. Genet 
was banqueted on every possible occasion and toasted 
sometimes when a toast to Washington was forgotten. 
Men put on the tri-colored cockade, joined Jacobin clubs, 
and restricted the form of salutation to " citizen." 

Citizen Freneau was with the French heart and soul. 
The French cause was dear to him for sentimental reasons 

^* Freneau's Poems. ^^ National Gazette, May, 1793. 



531] The Democratic Editor. 67 

as well as for political, for, as De Lancey says, " although 
he belonged to the third generation of his family in Ameri- 
ca, he was as thorough a Frenchman as if he had been 
born under the sunny skies of Provence or had drawn his 
first breath amid the Bordelais or beneath the lofty tower 
of an ancient chateau of historic Normandy." ^^ With the 
warmth of a Frenchman and the boldness of an American 
he threw the influence of his paper upon the side of the 
French party. The interests of America became in his 
mind identical with the interests of France. He believed 
with John Dickinson that if " France did not succeed in 
her contest every elective republic upon earth would be 
annihilated and that the American repubHc would be 
crushed at once/' As between France and England it was 
impossible for Freneau's fervid and positive mind to pro- 
fess neutrality. " When of two nations the one has en- 
gaged herself in a ruinous war for us, has spent her blood 
and money for us, has opened her bosom to us in peace 
and has received us on a footing almost with her own citi- 
zens, while the other has moved heaven and earth and 
hell to exterminate us in war, has insulted us in all her 
councils, in peace shut her doors to us in every port where 
her interest would admit it, libelled us in foreign nations, 
endeavored to poison them against the reception of our 
most precious commodities: to place these two nations on 
an equal footing is to give a great deal more to one than 
to the other, if the maxim be true that to make unequal 
quantities equal you must add more to one than to the 
other. To say in excuse, that gratitude is never to enter 
into the notions of national conduct is to revive a principle 
which has been buried for centuries, with its kindred prin- 
ciples of the lawfulness of assassination, perjury and poi- 
son."" That is the way the matter appeared to Jefferson; 
Freneau's feelings upon the subject were still stronger. 



' Edward F. De Lancey in Proceedings of the Huguenot Soc. 
Jefferson's Works, vol. iii, p. 98. 



68 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [532 

But the president decided that it was no time for grati- 
tude and declared by proclamation that the United States 
should pursue an impartial course and should grant noth- 
ing to France that was not granted to England also. A 
storm of disapproval burst upon the president's head 
when this proclamation was published. Of all the voices 
that were lifted up against his policy, none was louder and 
none was more distinctly heard by the president or gave 
him more discomfiture than the voice of Freneau. " Sir," 
said the editor to the president, " Sir, let not, I beseech 
you, the opiate of sycophancy, administered by interested 
and designing men, lull you into a fatal lethargy at this 
awful moment. Consider that a first magistrate in every 
country is no other than a public servant whose conduct 
is to be governed by the will of the people." ^* 

When Genet had brought upon himself the united oppo- 
sition of the administration and had alienated many of his 
supporters by his high-handed actions and by his boast 
that he would appeal from the president to the people, 
Freneau stood by him and supported him to the last. 
" Why all this outcry," he said, " against Mr. Genet, for 
saying he would appeal to the people? Is the president a 
consecrated character that an appeal from him must be 
considered criminal? What is the legislature of the union 
but the people in congress assembled? And is it an 
af¥ront to appeal to them? The minister of France, I 
hope will act with firmness and with spirit. The people 
are his friends, or rather the friends of France, and he will 
have nothing to apprehend, for as yet the people are sov- 
ereign in the United States. Too much complacency is an 
injury done his cause, for as every advantage is already 
taken of France (not by the people) further condescension 
may lead to further abuse. If one of the leading features 
of our government is pusillanimity, when the British lion 
shows his teeth, let France and her minister act as becomes 

^^ National Gazette, June, 1793. 



533] The Democratic Editor. 69 

/ 
the dignity and justice of their cause and the honor and 
faith of nations." '^ 

This was strong language and it affected Washington 
powerfully. Before this French interference he had never 
been crossed in his policy, and criticism went hard with 
him. " By God," he said in one of those passions that 
sometimes took possession of him, " By God that he had 
rather be in his grave than in his present situation. That 
he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of 
the world; that that rascal Freneau, sent him three copies 
of his paper every day, as if he thought he would become 
the distributor of his paper; that he could see nothing in 
this but an impudent design to insult him." ^" 

Washington was so sensitive and fretful upon the sub- 
ject of Freneau that he intimated to Jefiferson that it would 
be agreeable to him if the secretary would withdraw Fre- 
neau's appointment as translating clerk. " But I will not 
do it," said Jefferson. " His paper has saved our consti- 
tution which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has been 
checked by no one means so powerfully as by that paper. 
It is well and universally known that it has been that 
paper which has checked the career of the monocrats and 
the president has not with his usual good sense looked 
upon the efforts and effects of that free press and seen that 
though some bad things have passed through it to the 
public, yet the good have preponderated immensely." 

Jefferson could have discharged Freneau but he could 
not have silenced him. The sturdy editor had taken up 
the French cause for its own sake and without regard to 
consequences. His perfect independence in the manage- 
ment of his paper is attested to indirectly by Jefferson in a 
letter written to Madison after Genet had been abandoned 
by the more discreet republicans. Speaking of Genet, 
Jefferson says in this letter: " He has still some defend- 



National Gazette, July, 1793. 
Jefferson's Works, vol. i, p. 231. 



70 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [534 

ers in Freneau's and Greenleafs papers. Who they are 
I do not know/'^ This was written after Jefferson had 
abandoned Genet. Does the language imply subserviency 
upon the part of Freneau? If the National Gazette had 
been under the control of Jefferson would it have con- 
tinued to support a cause after its master had withdrawn 
his support from the cause? 

Besides being its greatest literary champion, Freneau 
was in other ways a conspicuous figure among the pro- 
moters of the French cause. His editorial office was a 
rendezvous for French sympathizers; he sohcited and col- 
lected funds to be sent to France, acting as agent for the 
"French Society of Patriots of America." "" At the not- 
able civic feast given in Philadelphia in honor of Genet an 
ode in French was read, and Citizen Freneau was requested 
to translate it into EngHsh. This the poet did in an un- 
commonly careless and unhappy fashion. 

Historians have the habit of abusing Fren.eau for the 
part he played in the French incident and they are espe- 
cially severe when they animadvert upon his opposition 
to Washington. It is difficult to see why this habit has 
not been laid aside. Freneau as a partisan of France had 
for company the greatest and wisest of the land, patriots 
and statesmen and scientists. The heart of America, its 
generosity, its justice, its pride, its gratitude were all on 
the side of giving assistance to the French. Policy alone 
dictated neutrality. Freneau, knowing nothing of policy, 
and failing to appreciate the wisdom of Washington's 
course, resisted the government in its effort for neutrality. 
Washington as the head of the government could not 
escape criticism, and Freneau did not spare him. Yet 
Freneau's part in the widespread and violent opposition to 
Washington has been grossly misrepresented. After read- 
ing the story of the French episode as it is usually told. 



®^ Jefferson's Works, vol. i, p. 
^^ National Gazette, July, 1793. 



535] The Democratic Editor. 71 

one would expect to find the National Gazette filled with 
scandalous and scurrilous attacks upon the president. As 
a matter of fact one will find there nothing of the kind. 
There are some pretty sulphurous passages in that paper, 
and no wonder. There were blows to give as well as blows 
to take. When Fisher Ames spoke of those who sup- 
ported the French cause " as salamanders that breathed 
only in fire, as toads that sucked in no aliment from the 
earth but its poison, as serpents that lurked in their places 
the better to concoct their venom," ^' — when a federalist 
talked that way about French democrats in America, we 
can scarcely expect the reply of the democrat to be as 
gentle as the cooing of a dove. But the savage passages 
in the National Gazette are not directed against Washing- 
ton. The most offensive paragraph that can be found in 
Freneau's paper is, unquestionably, one that comments 
upon the president's proclamation of neutrality. It reads: 
" I am aware, sir, that some court satellites may have 
deceived you with respect to the sentiment of your fellow 
citizens. The first magistrate of a country whether he be 
called king or president seldom knows the real state of a 
nation, particularly if he be so buoyed up by official im- 
portance as to think it beneath his dignity to mix occa- 
sionally with the people. Let me caution you, sir, to be- 
ware that you do not view the state of the public mind at 
this critical moment through a fallacious medium. Let not 
the little buzz of the aristocratic few and their contempt- 
ible minions of speciilators, tories and British emissaries, 
be mistaken for the exalted and generous voice of the 
American people." The ugliest and coarsest sentence that 
Freneau pubHshed against Washington is to be found in 
the paragraph just quoted. It was most certainly not writ- 
ten by Freneau, yet he must be held responsible for it. 
When it is examined and compared with other pasquinades 
of the time it must be admitted that its tone was mild and 

®^ Fisher Ames' Works, vol. ii. 



72 



The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [536 



decent. It is equally mild and decent when compared with 
editorial utterances of our own day. 

Personally Freneau shared the general regard and rev- 
erence for Washington, and he let no opportunity slip for 
paying tribute to the great man. If placed together, the 
verses written by Freneau in Washington's praise would 
make a comfortable little volume. Even when the French 
trouble was at its height, he could see the greatness of the 
man, for, in June, 1793, when Washington was probably 
the most unpopular man in America, the poet forgot his 
partisanship far enough to publish in his Gazette a grace- 
ful and inspiring ode written in the president's praise. 

Yet Freneau did not make an idol of Washington. His 
working hypothesis was that the president was a man after 
all, and he had but little patience with those who afifected 
to see in Washington a god. It was the fashion in high 
federal circles to twist every anti-federal sentiment or 
movement into treason to Washington. " Would to God 
this same Washington were in heaven," cried Senator 
Maclay, disgusted with what he thought was Washington- 
worship. " We would not then have him brought forward 
as the constant cover to every unconstitutional and irre- 
publican act." ^'' When soon after Washington's death ex- 
travagant and even blasphemous encomiums appeared 
from every quarter, Freneau thus rebuked their fulsome- 
ness: 

One holds you more than mortal kind, 
One holds you all ethereal mind, 
This puts you in your Savior's seat 
That makes you dreadful in retreat. 

One says you are become a star, 
One makes you more resplendent far; 
One sings that when to death you bowed 
Old mother nature shrieked aloud. 

We grieve to see such pens profane 
The first of chiefs, the first of men; 
To Washington — a man who died — 
Is "Abba, father," well applied! 

"* Maclay's Journal, p. 351. 



537] The Democratic Editor. 73 

He was no god, ye flattering knaves, 

He " owned no world," he ruled no waves, 

But — and exalt it if you can — 

He was the upright HONEST MAN. 

In the autumn of 1793, Philadelphia was stricken by a 
deadly plague. A putrid yellow fever broke out in the 
city and thousands of victims perished. Half of the popu- 
lation fled into the country. Government offices were 
closed and business came to a standstill. In the general 
depression that accompanied the pestilence Freneau suf- 
fered with others. His list of talents did not include a 
talent for business and the finances of his paper were badly 
managed. Subscribers though often dunned failed to re- 
mit; and it was upon subscriptions that the paper chiefly 
depended, for the editor scrupulously refused to allow ad- 
vertisements to encroach upon the space allotted to read- 
ing matter. 

On the 26th of October, the following notice was in- 
serted in the Gazette: 

With the present number (208) conclude the second volume and 
second year's publication of the National Gazette. Having just 
imported a considerable quantity of new and elegant type from 
Europe, it is the editor's intention to resume the publication in a 
short time — at the opening of the next congress. 
Please send in subscriptions. 

S^^" Printers of newspapers may no longer send in exchange 
until further notice. 

About the time of the discontinuance of the newspaper, 
Jefiferson resigned his office, and Freneau was compelled 
to resign his clerkship in the department of state. It is 
not absolutely certain that a bankruptcy wound up the 
affairs of the Gazette. The yellow fever may have driven 
out Freneau as it drove out thousands of others. Jefifer- 
son writing to Randolph said: " Freneau's paper is dis- 
continued. I fear it is the want of money. I wish the 
subscribers in our neighborhood would send in their 
money." "" In a letter to Wm. Giles, Freneau says : " Sev- 

® Jefferson's Works, vol. vi, p. 428. 



74 The Political Activities of Philip Freneaii. [538 

eral unfavorable circumstances have determined me to a 
final discontinuance of the National Gazette." *"" Precisely 
what the unfortunate circumstances were we do not know. 
Three causes for abandoning the Gazette are suggested by 
the facts: Shortage in subscription money, the prevalence 
of the yellow fever, and the loss of government patronage 
and of his clerkship through Jefiferson's resignation. The 
publication of the paper was never resumed. Freneau as 
an editor had done his work. 

What was that work? What was the mission of the Na- 
tional Gazette? What was its influence upon American 
politics and upon the American mind? 

We have considerable material from which we may draw 
answers to these questions, for politicians have expressed 
themselves freely regarding the National Gazette. For 
Hamilton's opinion of the paper we are prepared: "As to 
the complexion and tendency of that Gazette a reference 
to itself is sufficient. No man who loves the government 
or is a friend to tranquility but must reprobate it as an in- 
cendiary and pernicious publication."*'^ And again: "If 
you have seen some of the last numbers of the Gazette you 
will perceive that the plot thickens and that something 
very like a serious design to subvert the government dis- 
closes itself." To Hamilton's mind, then, the Gazette was 
a most dangerous foe to the government — which happened 
to be the federalist party. 

The testimony of John Adams regarding the influence 
of Freneau is interesting. " We Federalists," he wrote to 
Benjamin Stoddard, " are completely and totally routed 
and defeated. If we had been blessed with common sense 
we would not have been overthrown by Freneau, Duane, 
Callendar or their great patron and protector." ^^ In a 



^ From a letter in the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical 
Association. 

®^ Hamilton's Works, vol. vii, p. z^. 
®® John Adams' Works, vol. viii, p. 514. 



539] The Democratic Editor. 75 

letter to Thomas Jefferson,*" Adams says: "What think 
you of terrorism, Mr. Jefferson? I shall investigate the 
motive, the incentive to these terrorisms. I shall remind 
you of Philip Freneau, Lloyd, Ned Church," etc. — naming 
other partisan writers. Late in life the aged statesman 
said: " The causes of my retirement are to be found in the 
writings of Freneau, Markoe, Ned Church " ^^ — and other 
troublesome newspaper men." It will be seen that when 
Adams begins to name the writers that have injured his 
political fortunes, he always puts Freneau at the head of 
the list. The Editor of the National Gazette seems to 
have lain like an incubus upon his life. For the year 1791 
there is but one entry in his diary and that is a jotting re- 
specting the National Gazette. In writing to Tristam 
Dalton in 1797 Adams says: "I have ever believed in 
his [Jefferson's] honor, integrity, love of country and 
friends. I may say to you that his patronage of Paine and 
Freneau is and has long been a source of inquietude and 
anxiety to me." '^ When it assailed Washington, Adams re- 
joiced, saying that he himself had held the post of libellee- 
general long enough. The following verses are a sample 
of the writings that Adams found so destructive of his 
peace: 

TO A WOULD-BE GREAT MAN. 
Certat tergeminis tollere honoribus. 

Daddy vice, Daddy vice, 

One may see in a trice 
The drift of your fine publication; 

As sure as a gun, 

The thing was just done 
To secure you — a pretty high station. 

Defenses you call 

To knock down your wall 
And shatter the STATE to the ground, sir. 

So thick was your shot, 

And hellish fire-hot 
They've scarce a whole bone to be found, sir. 

®'John Adams' Works, vol. ix, p. 582. 

^^ John Adams' Works, vol. iii, p. 414. 

''^ Ford's Writings of Jefferson, vol. vii, p. 108. 



76 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [540 

When you tell us of kings, 
And such petty things, 
Good Mercy! how brilliant your pages! 
So bright in each line 
I vow now you'll shine — 
Like — a glow worm to all future ages. 

On Davilla's '^ page 

Your Discourses so sage 
Democratical numskulls bepuzzle 
With arguments tough 

As white leather or buff, 
(The republican Bull-dog to muzzle). 

Fisher Ames expressed his view of Freneau's paper as 
a factor in politics in these words : " The manifestoes of 
the National Gazette indicate a spirit of faction that must 
soon come to a crisis. Every exertion is made through 
their (the republicans') Gazette to make the people as fu- 
rious as themselves." ^^ 

Timothy D wight of Hartford, " the Metropolitan see of 
Federalism," upon reading the Gazette was moved to ex- 
press himself thus: "Freneau your printer, linguist, etc., 
is regarded here as a mere incendiary and his paper is a 
public nuisance." '* 

Oliver Wolcott was not quite so severe but he hits the 
nail pretty squarely on the head when he said that it was 
the settled purpose of the National Gazette to destroy the 
popularity of the leading men of our country." 

Rufus King complained that the censures of the Na- 
tional Gazette were creating a dissatisfaction with the gov- 
ernment." 

Freneau's friends have not placed on record as much 
evidence of the great influence of the Gazette as his ene- 
mies have left; yet they have not been silent. We have 
already seen that Jefferson estimated the Gazette as being 



" Adams' Discourses of Davilla — a treatise defending strong 
government. 

^^ Fisher Ames' Works, vol. i, p. 128. 

''* Gibbs' Washington's and Adams' Administration, vol. i, p. 109. 

""^ Ibid. ^® Life and Correspondence of Rufus King. 



541] The Democratic Editor. 77 

one of the strongest influences in American politics. In 
his judgment, it was the Gazette that saved the United 
States from drifting into monarchy. The great democrat 
watched the paper with an anxious eye and its success 
brought him the highest satisfaction. " Freneau's paper," 
he wrote to a friend, " is getting into Massachusetts under 
the patronage of Hancock and Samuel Adams, and Mr. 
Ames the colossus of the monocrats, will either be left out 
or have a hard run. The people of that state are republi- 
can, but hitherto they have heard nothing but the hymns 
and lauds of Fenno." " 

James Madison was also gratified at the work which his 
old friend was doing in the cause of democracy. " Fre- 
neau's paper," he said, "justifies the expectations of his 
friends and merits the diffusive circulation they have en- 
deavored to procure it." ^* 

From the contemporaries of the National Gazette, we 
may glean some matter that will enable us to form a judg- 
ment as to the part it played in the propaganda of demo- 
cratic doctrine. In the unfriendly Connecticut Courant we 
find this tribute to its influence : ^' From the National 
Gazette whence in streams pure and smoking like a drain 
from a whiskey distillery it is conveyed to reservoirs es- 
tablished in every part of the community." ^' 

In the friendly Independent Chronicle, of Boston, we 
read : " As the friends of civil liberty wish at all time to 
be acquainted with every question which appears to regard 
the public weal, a great' number of gentlemen in this and 
neighboring towns have subscribed for Mr. Freneau's Na- 
tional Gazette." '" 

The Halifax Journal of North Carolina attributes the de- 
feat of Mr. Adams in that state to the discussion of his 
career in the columns of Freneau's paper. The South 

" Jefferson's Works, vol. iii, p. 491. 
^^ Madison's Works, vol. iv, p. 543. 
'^ Connecticut Courant, 1792. 
*° Boston Independent Chronicle, 1793. 



78 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [54^ 

Carolina Gazette was so enraged by Freneau's opposition 
to the measures of government, that it called for his pun- 
ishment. 

These utterances of friends and foes ought to give us 
a fairly correct notion of Freneau's place in the history of 
our politics. They teach us that he was hated and feared 
as the greatest editor of the democratic party. His paper 
was published in the seed-time of democracy in America.. 
The soil of party politics was virgin and Freneau sowed 
with a lavish hand. To the federalist mind it seemed that 
the seeds he was sowing were dragons' teeth which would 
one day spring up as giants and destroy society and gov- 
ernment. Society and government were not injured by 
the principles advocated by the editor, but the federalist 
party was. 

The part Freneau played in the making of democratic 
sentiment may be summed up as follows : 

1. He was the ablest champion of what is known as " Jef- 
fersonian simplicity." The war which he waged upon 
titles, distinctions, and court-like ceremonies was success- 
ful and decisive. 

2. Through his paper the strongest opposition to Ham^ 
ilton's centralizing schemes found expression. If Freneau 
had not early checked Fenno, it jnay be that loose con- 
struction would have run away with the constitution. 

3. Freneau's paper did much to give a French coloring 
to our political philosophy. The doctrines of liberty, fra- 
ternity, equality, of equal rights to all and special privi- 
leges to none, was unwelcome to many American minds in. 
Freneau's day, yet this was the keynote of all Freneau's 
writings. The editor of the National Gazette was the 
schoolmaster who drilled Jefifersonian or French Democ- 
racy into the minds — willing or unwilling — of the Ameri- 
can people. 

Freneau's place in the history of journalism is distinct 
and eminent. He is the prototype of the partisan editor. 



543] The Democratic Editor. 79 

A recent student of the history of American journalism 
thus speaks of him: 

" Next to Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton, one 
figure assumes a prominence superior to that of all others 
engaged in the political contest, not so much perhaps by 
the weight of his intellect as by his versatility and vivacity 
and the keenness and the readiness of the weapons he 
brought to the contest. We refer to Philip Freneau. 
What Tyrtaeus was to the Spartan was Freneau to the re- 
publicans or anti-federalists. In all the history of Ameri- 
can letters or of the United States press there is no figure 
more interesting or remarkable, no career more versatile 
and varied than that of Philip Freneau." *^ 

*^ Magazine of American History, vol. xvii, p. 121. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE POET OF THE WAR OF 1812 

Freneau had just entered his forties when he ceased to 
pubHsh the National Gazette. He had given two of the 
best years of his Hfe to that paper, but there was a long 
span still before him. Immediately upon leaving Philadel- 
phia he went to Charleston, South Carolina, to visit his 
brother Peter. Peter Freneau was a democratic editor 
of repute, the Secretary of State of South Carolina, and 
Jefferson's political manager in that state. Philip was well 
received in Charleston and he made friendships while there 
which were genuine and lasting. 

After a pleasant sojourn of several months in the South, 
Freneau returned to his New Jersey home. There he 
spent a year or two doing nothing of importance, unless it 
was to write an occasional attack upon the government and 
print it in Bache's "Aurora," — ^just to let John Adams 
know that Philip Freneau was still living. With letters 
in his pocket from Jefferson and Madison recommending 
him for " his sound discretion and extensive information " 
the editor applied for the managership of a projected 
newspaper in New York, but nothing came of that 
scheme.^ We may remember that when he closed up the 
affairs of the National Gazette he had on hand " a consid- 
erable quantity of new and elegant type." This type he 
seems to have removed to his old home in Mount Pleasant, 
near Middletown Point (now Mattawan), New Jersey, 
where he set up as a practical country printer. Following 
the bent of his genius he tried journalism again, this time 
in the role of a country editor. May 2, 1795, he printed 

^ Hudson's History of Journalism, p. 187. 



545] The Poet of the War of 1812. 81 

the first number of the " Jersey Chronicle." A copy of 
this quaint journal is preserved in the library of the New 
York Historical Society. It is a little typographical fail- 
ure, in the form of a quarto, precisely seven inches by eight. 

Freneau made his bow to his rural constituents in these 
lines: "The Editor in the publication of this paper pro- 
poses among other things to present his readers w^ith a 
complete history of the foreign and domestic events of the 
times, together with such essays, remarks, and observa- 
tions as shall tend to illustrate the politics or mark the 
general character of the age and country in which we live." 
We learn also from the paper that P. Freneau was ready 
and willing to print Handbills and Advertisements at the 
shortest notice, and upon the most reasonable terms. The 
political tone of the Chronicle was of course democratic, 
and the editor never failed to deal an opportune blow at 
the political aspirations of John Adams and Alexander 
Hamilton. 

But the chronicle did not prosper. '' Newspapers," 
says Hudson, " have not made their mark in New Jersey as 
in many of the old states. Situated between New York 
and Philadelphia, it has been placed in a position to enjoy 
the news facilities of those two cities." " After a year of 
struggle the editor announced the discontinuance of the 
paper, embracing the opportunity " to return his sincere 
thanks to such persons as had favored him with their sub- 
scriptions and had by their punctuality enabled him to 
issue a free, independent and republican paper." 

Another literary venture of 1795 was more successful. 
Having collected all his poems he published such as he 
deemed worthy in an octavo volume at his own press. 
The motley type that greets the eye in this interesting vol- 
ume was probably set by the poet's own hands. This is 
the most important edition of Freneau's poetical works 
that we have. It contains nearly three hundred poems 
written in almost every variety of metre and is " a treasury 

^ Hudson's Journalism in the United States, p. 187. 
38 



82 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [546 

of song, tale, satire, epigram and description." In this 
leather-bound, worm-eaten volume is to be found nearly 
all that is good, as well as nearly all that is inferior in 
Freneau. The inferior forms the larger part of the book, 
to be sure, but there is enough genuine poetry scattered 
through the volume to keep it utterly from perishing. His 
volume of 1787 has been deemed worthy of being reprinted 
in recent years; the volume of 1795 is still more worthy of 
being rescued from oblivion. 

Freneau was not at all disheartened by the failure of the 
Chronicle. He had lived all his life amid the wreck of 
newspapers, and for one to go down was to him the most 
natural thing in the world. Hardly had the little rustic 
sheet succumbed than he tried his luck again. In March, 
1797, in the city of New York, he offered to the reading 
public the first number of his "Time-Piece and Literary 
Companion." 

This paper was to be a " vehicle for the diffusion of lit- 
erary knowledge, news, and liberal amusement in general." 
At first Freneau associated with him as printer one A. 
Menut, a Canadian. Menut in a short time dropped out 
and M. L. Davis, a democratic politician of some import- 
ance, took his place. Freneau and Davis managed (or 
mismanaged) the paper until March, 1798, when Freneau 
withdrew and left Davis the sole manager. Davis kept 
the paper going until August, 1798, when the Time-Piece 
went the way of the other ventures. 

The Time-Piece is an interesting potpourri of literary 
performances, ranging from discussions upon the cultiva- 
tion of pumpkins, to schemes for the reorganization of so- 
ciety upon principles of natural right. The political senti- 
ments of the paper were of the purest Jefifersonian quality. 
It declared for rotation in office, pure and frequent elec- 
tions, a free church, a free press, and the abolition of entails. 
As one turns over the leaves of this rare file one cannot but 
praise the versatility and tact of the editor in catering to 
the public taste. 

When the yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia, Fre- 



547] The Poet of the War of 1812. 83 

neau had removed his family to his old home in Mount 
Pleasant where a portion of his inheritance still remained 
to him. In this quiet village (the name of which, by the 
way has recently been changed to Freneau) the poet, when 
not upon the sea, spent most of the remaining years of his 
life. In his retirement his literary activity did not cease. 
The magazines of the day welcomed his poetry and he 
contributed to them constantly. Among those occasional 
pieces we find one upon the death of Washington. It is 
a gracious tribute, and bespeaks magnanimity and large- 
heartedness; for the truth is, Freneau had no reason to 
love Washington. The country, however, had reason to 
love its great chief, and Freneau sang the songs of his 
country. 

As a publicist he still couched a lance for the republi- 
can party. His political pieces generally appeared in 
Bache's Aurora, the political successor of the National Ga- 
zette. In 1799, he collected a few of these productions 
and had them printed in a small octavo volume under the 
title: "Letters on Various Interesting and Important 
Subjects, many of which have appeared in the Aurora. 
Corrected and Much Enlarged. By Robert Slender, O. S. 
M." 

O. S. M., being interpreted, is, *' One of the Swinish 
Multitude." These essays were very spicy and some of 
them illustrate excellently Freneau's method of striking at 
a political enemy. For instance, here is one which shows 
how he went about making life unpleasant for John Adams, 
and incidentally damaging the chances of the second presi- 
dent for a second term: 

The Epitaph of Jonathan Robbins.^ 
(Robert Slender, LoquiUir.) 
I have just seen the end of Robbins, poor, brave, in- 
jured, betrayed, unfortunate Robbins. I have seen him 

^ This Robbins was a sailor who was delivered up to the English 
by the order of an American court, and was hanged on the charge 
of inciting mutiny on board the English frigate Hermione. 
Robbins claimed to be an American citizen, and much political 
capital was made out of the episode. 



84 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [548 

with my " minds eye " as Hamlet says, and a horrid spec- 
tacle it was. I have just been composing his epitaph, that 
will go down to posterity on the faithful and impartial page 
of history. Here it is: 

Reader 

If thou be a Christian and a Freeman, 

consider 

by what unexampled causes 

It has been necessary to construct 

This monument 

of national degradation 

and 

Individual injustice; 

which is erected 

To THE MEMORY of a Citizen of the United States, 

JONATHAN ROBBINS, MARINER, 

A native of Danbury, in the pious and industrious state of 

Connecticut: 

who 

Under the PRESIDENCY OF JOHN ADAMS, 

And by his advice, 

Timothy Pickering being Secretary of State, 

Was delivered up to the British government, 

By whom he was ignominiously put to death; 

because, 

Though an American Citizen, 

He was barbarously forced into the service of his country's 

worst enemy 

and compelled to fight 

Against his conscience and his country's good 

On board the British frigate Hermione 

Commanded by a monster of the name of Pigot. 

He 

Bravely asserted his rights to freedom as a man and boldly 

Extricated himself from the 'bondage of his tyrannical 

Oppressors 

After devoting them to merited destruction. 

If you are a seaman 

Pause : — 

Cast your eyes into your soul and ask 

If you had been as Robbins was 

What would you have done? 

What ought you not to do? 

And look at Robbins 

Hanging at a British yard-arm! 

He was your comrade — 

And as true a tar as ever strapped a block: 

He was your fellow-citizen. 

And as brave a heart as bled at Lexington or Trenton. 



549] The Poet of the War of 1812. 85 

Like you 

He was a member of a Republic 

Proud of past glories 

and 

Boastful of national honor, virtue, and independence. 

Like him 

You may one day be trussed up to satiate British vengeance, 

Your heinous crime 

daring to prefer danger or death 

To a base bondage — 

Alas, poor Robbins! 

Alas, poor Liberty! 

Alas, my Country! 

In the following we see Freneau as a campaign swash- 
buckler : 

OYEZIl! 

" Robert Slender, to the aristocrat, the democrat, the would- 
be noble, ex-noble, the snug farmer, the lowly plebeian, the 
bishops and clergy, reverend and right reverend, doctors, and 
V. O. M.'s little men or title men, gentlemen and simple men, 
laymen and draymen, and all other men except hangmen (to 
whom he hath an aversion) throughout this great and flourishing 
STATE sendeth greeting: 

*' Whereas a great and important day draweth near in which you 
are to exercise a great right, no less than to choose, elect, set 
apart, solemnly dedicate, appoint and highly honor either Thomas 
McKean, chief judge of Pennsylvania, or James Ross, practitioner 
at law, with the high sounding title, power and authority of Gov- 
ernor of the State — Having thrown off his apron, laid aside his 
tools, and neglected for a small time the honorable and ancient 
employment of shoe-mending, he hath an account of the great 
division, dissension and contradiction that exists, the fictions, lies, 
stories, calumnies, misinterprg^tions, wrong interpretations, asser- 
tions and computations, thoi^it proper not to address one of you 
but all of you, to call upon you in the most solemn manner, to be 
upon your guard, to open your ears and attend to even a mender 
of shoes. 

" Ye aristocrats and great men, whether merchants, doctors, 
proctors or lawyers, who sigh for greatness and long for dominion, 
whose hearts yearn for the glory of a crown, the splendor of a 
court, or the sweet marrow bones that are to be picked in his 
majesty's kitchen, whose eyes ache painfully once again to see 
the stars, crosses, crescents, coronets, with all the hieroglyphical, 
enigmatical, emblematical and all the other cals including rascals, 
which adorn the courts of kings — give a strong, true and decided 
vote for James Ross, who supports, approves, hopes for, longs for, 
and sighs for all these. 



86 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [550 

" Ye bishops and clergy, adorers of the triple crown, the mitre, 
the sable, the high seat in civil power, the much longed for and 
established church, and the ancient and profligate thing called 
tithes unite your forces, set Christianity at a defiance and give a 
firm vote for James Ross. 

" Ye old tories and refugees, British spies, speculators, guides 
and pensioners, approvers of British policy, aimers and designers, 
who in your hearts wish again to crouch under the protecting paw 
of the British lion — arrange your forces and give a fair vote for 
James Ross. — He is your sincere friend. 

" Ye, supporters of the British treaty, alien bill, stamp act, 
excise, standing army, funding system, who believe that a public 
debt is a public blessing, who say that republicanism is anything 
or nothing, and maintain that treaties made under the sanction of 
the Constitution are superior to it — draw near — be not idle on the 
day of election, support James Ross; he thinks as ye do, acts as 
you act, and will follow where you lead. 

" Ye democrats, soldiers of '76, ye supporters of our independ- 
ence, ye quellers of Great Britain, ye Americans in heart and in 
hand draw near, remember that Thomas McKean is your brother, 
the firm freeman, and the real christian — give him your vote. 

" Ye free-born Americans, whose hearts beat high for liberty and 
independence, who fear not the threats and disdain the power of all 
the tyrants on earth, assert your rights, make known that ye have 
not forgotten the late struggle, that the mean devices and shallow 
arguments of the X Y and Z's of the present day are not able to 
trick you out of your liberty or to make you the tools of a foreign 
despot — vote for Thomas McKean — the constant asserter of your 
rights and liberties. 

" Ye honest, ye independent, ye virtuous farmers, who sincerely 
wish to support that unequalled and glorious instrument, the 
Constitution of the United States, untarnished and unadulterated 
that ye may have it whole and entire, a sacred deposit to pos- 
terity, your best interest is at stake, join not with that troop but 
give an honest vote for Thomas T^Kean, the asserter, the sup- 
porter and defender of the invaluabre rights of his country. 

" Ye honest and industrious mechanics who daily sweat for the 
support of your families, who in the hour of danger are ever found 
foremost in the ranks to defend your own and your country's 
rights, vote for Thomas McKean, whom great men cannot make 
wink at injustice and oppression. 

" Let Porcupine growl, Liston pet, the long list of English 
agents, speculators, approvers of the fate of Jonathan Robbins, 
tories and refugees, gnash their teeth in vain; be true to your 
country, proof against bribery, true to posterity, true to your- 
selves, arrange ye under the banner of freedom and once more 
conquer, let the word be LIBERTY and McKEAN! " 

Freneau promised that if this volume should prove suc- 
cessful another would follow, but no such encouragement 



551] The Poet of the War of 1812. 87 

followed. When these pieces came out in the Aurora they 
were interesting, but they were of a day. The volume 
seems to have fallen flat and a second collection of Mr. 
Robert Slender's Essays did not appear. 

Write and edit and reprint as much as he would, Fre- 
neau could not get a living out of literature. To provide 
for his family the poet again went down to the sea and, 
about the year 1799, became the captain of a merchant- 
man. For seven or eight years from this date it is hard 
to keep trace of him. It is only from poems commemo- 
rative of scenes or events upon his voyages that we are 
enabled to get an occasional glimpse of him. In 1801, he 
was on the island of St. Thomas, and two years later upon 
the island of Madeira. While strolling around in the ele- 
gant shades of Madeira, Freneau, coming up with the 
god Bacchus, Prince of Madeira, straightway indited him 
an ode: 

I met him with awe, but no symptoms of fear, 

As I roved by his mountains and springs, 

When he said with a sneer, " How dare you come here 

You hater of despots and kings?" 

" Haste away with your barque on the foam of the main, 
To Charleston, I bid you repair; 
There drink your Jamaica that maddens the brain. 
You shall have no Madeira, I swear.' 

But Freneau conciliated the god and sampling some of 
his choicest wines heaped upon him and them unstinted 
praise. As Freneau grew older his praise for Bacchus 
mounted higher and was sounded oftener. When a poet 
dwells fondly on this theme, one suspects that he is tak- 
ing too much to strong drink. There is a reason to think 
Freneau was no exception to the rule. 

In 1804, Captain Freneau sailed to the Canary Islands. 
While upon Tenerifife, he was invited to visit a celebrated 
nunnery there. He declined the invitation in verse. Thus 
we may see that a stretch of years was passed upon the 
deep, sailing sometimes from New York, sometimes from 



88 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [552 

Charleston to the West Indies and the remote islands of 
the Atlantic. 

In 1807 the poet-captain abandoned his vocation as_ a 
sailor never to resume it* On a return voyage, as he ap- 
proached the heights of Navesink behind which a few miles 
away lay his home, a longing for retirement seized upon 
hini. 

Proud heights with pain so often seen, 

(With joy beheld once more) 

On your firm base I take my stand 

Tenacious of the shore. 

Let those who pant for wealth or fame 

Pursue the watery road. 

Soft sleep and ease, blest days and nights, 

And health attend these favorite heights, 

Retirement's blest abode. 

In a letter to Jefferson written in 181 5 he thus writes of 
his retirement: ''Since my last return from the Canary 
Islands in 1807 to Charleston and from thence to New 
York with my brigantine Washington, quitting the bustle 
and distraction of active life, my walks have been confined, 
with now and then a short excursion, to the neighborhood 
of Navesink Hills and under some old hereditary trees 
and on some fields which I well recollect for sixty years. 
During the last seven years my pen could not be entirely 
idle and for amusement only now and then I had recourse 
to my old habits of scribbling verse." ^ 

Freneau was fifty-five years of age when he withdrew 
from serious occupation. Hitherto his life had been one 
uninterrupted storm; henceforth it was to be one long 
calm. It is a pleasant picture which he draws of himself 
in his quiet home. 

Happy the man who safe on shore, 
Now trims at home his evening fire; 
Unmoved he hears the tempests roar, 
That on the tufted groves expire. 

* Jefferson's MS. in Archives of State Department at Washington. 
^Jefferson's MSS. in Archives of the State Department at Wash- 
ington. 



553] The Poet of the War of 1812. 89 

Although poUtics and the sea were forsaken, Freneau 
remained faithful to his muse. His ruling passion was 
strong to the last. No passing event worthy of commemo- 
ration was allowed to go unsung. In 1809 he prepared 
for the press a fourth edition of his poems, the work ap- 
pearing in two volumes neatly printed with striking cuts 
for frontispieces. 

" These poems," the author tells us, " were intended to 
expose to vice and treason their hideous deformity; to 
depict virtue, honor and patriotism in their natural beauty. 
To his countrymen in the Revolution, to Republicans and 
the rising generation who are attached to their sentiments 
and principles, the writer hopes this collection will not 
prove unacceptable." The book was gotten out on the 
strength of a subscription and in the first volume are 
printed the names of the subscribers. The subscription 
plan was set a-going by the publishers without the author's 
knowledge or approbation. Thomas Jefferson subscribed 
for ten volumes. In Jefferson's letter to Freneau promis- 
ing a subscription, he says : " I subscribe with pleasure to 
the publication of your volume of poems. I anticipate 
the same pleasure from them which the perusal of those 

heretofore published has given me Under the shade 

of a tree one of your volumes will be a pleasant pocket 
companion. Wishing you all possible success and happi- 
ness, I salute you with constant esteem and respect." ° 
James Madison, then president, also subscribed for ten 
volumes. The popularity of the poet seems to have been 
greatest in Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia a bookseller 
subscribed for 200 copies; in Lancaster a dealer engaged 
to take 150 copies. A host of subscribers came from 
South Carolina where the name of Freneau was held in 
high esteem. In all, about one thousand copies were 
taken by subscription. We must not despise this small 
number. Looked at in its relation to the number of 

^Jefferson's MS. in Archives of the State Department at Wash- 
ington. 



90 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [554 

people, it is as large as an edition of ten or fifteen thous- 
and copies to-day would be. What poet of our time can 
do better with his fourth edition? 

The edition of 1809 is neither so picturesque nor so 
valuable as the edition of 1795. Many of the poems of 
the earlier volume have been crowded out for the later 
performances, and rarely has there been any gain by the 
substitution. Nevertheless in the six hundred pages of the 
two volumes there was more good poetry than any Ameri- 
can writer had yet produced, for in 1809, be it remembered 
Longfellow was but two years old, Poe and Holmes were 
infants, Bryant had just entered his teens and Lowell was 
not yet born. 

The clash of arms that announced for the second time 
American resistance to British aggression was a signal 
for the old poet to tune his harp anew. As he had been 
the poet of the Revolution so now he became the poet of 
the war of 1812. Nothing throughout his life gave him 
more pleasure than to extol his countrymen at the expense 
of England. It was the poet's way of indulging hatred. 
He followed closely the progress of the second war and 
many a ballad from his pen celebrated the glory of our 
armies upon land and upon sea. His pieces, we are told, 
were held in great favor by sailors, and were for many 
years reprinted in broadsides and sold at all our ports.'' 
In 181 5, he collected most of these martial performances 
and printed them in two small volumes at the press of 
David Longworth, of New York city. On the title page 
of this rare and forgotten edition the poet thus bids de- 
fiance to England:^ 

Then England come! a sense of wrong requires 
To meet with thirteen stars your thousand fires, 
Through these stern times the conflict to maintain, 
Or drown them with your commerce in the main. 

'^ Griswold's American Poets, p. 34. 

* The title is: A collection of Poems on American Affairs, and a 
variety of other subjects chiefly moral and political. By Philip 
Freneau, 



555] The Poet of the War of 1812. 91 

The theme of the first poem of these volumes of his old 
age is the theme of his life — democracy. In the opening 
lines we recognize the philosophy of Jefferson and the 
policy of Madison: 

Left to himself, where'er man is found, 

In peace he aims to walk Hfe's little round, 

In peace to sail, in peace to till the soil. 

Nor force false grandeur from a brother's toil; 

All but the base, designing, scheming few 

Who seize on nations with a robber's view. 

These, these with armies, navies potent grown, 

Impoverish man and bid the nation moan; 

These with pretended balances of state 

Keep worlds at variance, breed eternal hate, 

Make man the poor, base slave of low design, 

Degrade the nature to its last decline. 

Shed hell's worst blots on his exalted race, 

And make them fear, and mean to make them base. 

The following stanzas were written when England had 
about reached the end of her tether in her policy of terror- 
izing American commerce and when war was about to be 
declared. They are bad from the critic's point of view, but 
there is a ring and a movement about them which is dis- 
tinctly bellicose and which must have been taking with 
those who wanted to fight. 

Americans! rouse at the rumors of war 

Which now are distracting the hearts of the nation, 

A flame blowing up to extinguish your power. 

And leave you a prey to another invasion; 

A second invasion as bad as the old. 

When, northward or southward wherever they strolled. 

With heart and with hand, a murdering band. 

Of vagrants come over to ravage your land; 

For liberty's guard you are ever arrayed, 

And know how to fight in sun or in shade. 

Remember the cause that induced you to rise. 

When oppression advanced with her king making boast, 

'Twas the cause of our nation that bade you despise, 

And drive to destruction all England's proud host. 

Who with musket and sword, under men they adored. 

Rushed into each village and rifled each shade, 

To murder the planter and ravish the maid. 



92 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [556 

All true-born Americans join as of old 

For Freedom's defense be your firm resolution; 

Whoever invades you by force or by gold, 

Alike is a foe to a free constitution; 

Unite to pull down that imposture, a crown. 

Oppose it, at least, 'tis a mark of the beast, 

All tyranny's engines again are at work 

To make you as poor and as base as the Turk. 

After the best is said, it must be confessed that Fre- 
neau's last work was his worst. The edition of 1815, like 
most of his poetry, consisted chiefly of occasional pieces 
and it is the usual fate of occasional pieces to be speedily 
forgotten. The volume was reviewed in the '' Analectic 
Magazine " — a New York periodical — in a kindly tone. 
" A considerable part of the present collection," wrote the 
critic, " relates to the transactions of the late war and 
scarcely a memorable incident either on land or water has 
escaped the glance of his ever-vigilant and indefatigable 
muse. He depicts land and naval fights with much anima- 
tion and gay coloring, and being himself a son of old Nep- 
tune, he is never at a loss for appropriate circumstances 
and expressive dictum when the scene lies at sea. His 
martial and political ballads are free from bombast and 
affectation and often have an arch simplicity of manner 
that renders them striking and poignant. The strains of 
Freneau are calculated to impart patriotic impulses to the 
hearts of his countrymen and their effect in this way should 
be taken as a test of their merit." ^ 

With the war of 1812 and the appearance of the poems 
just noticed, Freneau's career as a writer ended. A short 
poem under his name may now and then be found in the 
magazines and newspapers up almost to the time of his 
death, but writing was no longer a serious business with 
him. His last years were spent in rural retirement in his 
New Jersey home. He was, however, far from being a 
recluse. New York was easily accessible by boat and he 
frequently visited the scenes of his better days. He could 

' Analectic Magazine, 1815. 



557] The Poet of the War of 1812. 93 

not forget his old democratic friends and they do not seem 
to have forgotten him. Jefferson, when president, is said 
to have remembered him with special favor. The story 
goes that Jefferson sent to Frene'au asking him to come to 
Washington on important business, and that the poet re- 
plied in these words: "Tell Thomas Jefferson that he 
knows where Philip Freneau lives and if he has important 
business with him let him come to Philip Freneau's house 
and transact it." This bumptiousness (if Freneau was 
really guilty of using these words), did not alienate Jeffer- 
son, for later he tendered the poet an office under the gov- 
ernment. The position was declined.^" 

In New York literary circles he was affectionately re- 
ceived as the '' Veteran Bard of the Revolution." We 
have a charming account of the personal life of the poet 
in his old age, written by one who knew him well. The 
sketch is rambling and somewhat garrulous, yet it is so 
graphic that it must be quoted at length :" " Freneau was 
widely known to a large circle of our most prominent and 
patriotic New Yorkers. His native city, with all his wan- 
derings, was ever uppermost in his mind and affections. 

He was esteemed a true patriot, and his private 

worth, his courteous manner and his general bearing won 
admiration with all parties. His pen was more acri- 
monious than his heart. He was tolerant, frank in expres- 
sion, and not deficient in geniality. He was highly culti- 
vated in classical knowledge, abounding in anecdotes of 
the revolutionary crisis, and extensively acquainted with 
prominent characters. 

" It was easy to record a long list of eminent citizens who 
ever gave him a cordial welcome. He was received with 
the warmest greetings by the old soldier. Governor George 

'" New Bedford Mercury, 1884. 

" The quotation is from the pen of Dr. J. W. Francis, a former 
president of the New York Historical Society. It was written at 
the request of E. A. Duyckinck, who wished it for his article on 
Freneau in his Cyclopedia of American Literature. 



94 The Political Activities of Philip Frcneau. [558 

Clinton. He also found agreeable pastime with the learned 
Provoost, the first regularly consecrated Bishop of the 
American Protestant Episcopate, who himself shouldered 
a musket in the revolution and hence was called the fight- 
ing Bishop. They were allied by classical tastes, a love of 
natural science and ardor in the cause of liberty. With 
Gates he compared the achievements of Monmouth with 
those of Saratoga; with Col. Fish he reviewed the capture 
of Yorktown; with Dr. Mitchell he rehearsed from his own 
sad experience the phvsical sufiferings and various diseases 
of the incarcerated patriots of the Jersey prison-ship; and 
descanted on Italian Poetry and the piscatory eclogues of 
Sannazius. He, doubtless, furnished Dr. Benjamin De 
Witt with data for his funeral discourse on the remains 
of the 11,500 American Martyrs. With Pintard he could 
laud Horace and talk largely of Jones ; with Sylvanus Mil- 
ler he compared notes on the political clubs of 1795-1810. 
He shared Paine's vision of an ideal democracy. 

" I had when very young read the poetry of Freneau 
and as we instinctively become attached to the writers who 
first captivate our imaginations, it was with much zest 
that I formed a personal acquaintance with the revolu- 
tionary bard. He was at that time about seventy-six years 
old when he first introduced himself into my library. I 
gave him a hearty welcome. 

" New York, the city of his birth, was his most intimate 
theme; his collegiate career with Madison, next. His 
story of many of his occasional poems was quite romantic. 
As he had at command types and a printing-press, when an 
incident of moment in the Revolution occurred he would 
retire for composition or find shelter under the shade of 
some tree, indite his lyric, repair to the press, set up his 
types, and issue his productions. There was no difficulty 
in versification with him. I told him what I had heard 
Jeffrey, the Scotch Reviewer say of his writings, that the 
time would arrive when his poetry like that of Hudibras, 
would command a commentator like Gray. 



559] The Poet of the War of 1812. 95 

" It is remarkable how Freneau preserved the acquisi- 
tions of his early classical studies, notwithstanding he had 
for many years in the after portion of his life been occu- 
pied in pursuits so entirely alien to books. 

*' There is no portrait'' of the patriot Freneau; he always 
decHned the painter's art and could brook no counterfeit 
presentment." 

Nearly twenty years of life after his work was over, were 
left to the poet in which he might mingle with old asso- 
ciates and discuss the past. It is regrettable that the dis- 
cussion was too often conducted at the tavern over the 
flowing bowl. When the old bard looked back upon the 
road he had travelled, he saw it rough and stony; when 
he looked forward to the little journey that remained, the 
prospect was still barren and forbidding. His once ample 
estate had nearly slipped out of his hands. The records 
of the county court tell of sales of portions of the land of 
Philip Freneau and of foreclosures of mortgages upon his 
property." 

A short time after the war of 1812, while the poet and 

his family were at church, his house at Mount Pleasant 

was burned and all his correspondence and unpublished 

writings were consumed. One cannot help wishing that 

the letters he had received from Madison and Jefferson 

might have been saved. Freneau, reduced now almost to 

poverty, removed his family to a farm-house situated about 

two and a half miles from the village of Freehold. This 

house was occupied by the poet until his death. It still 

stands as a reminder of his worst days, when 

"The joys of wine are all his boast; 
These for a moment damped his pain, 
The gleam is o'er, the charm is lost, 
And darkness clouds the soul again." " 

" The portrait as usually given of Freneau is not genuine. It was 
sketched by an artist at the suggestion and according to the rep- 
resentation of members of the poet's family. It is pronounced by 
those who knew the original to be a fair visualization of the man 
as he appeared at maturity of life. Poems of the Revolution, 
p. xxxi. 

" Records of Monmouth County Court, 1823, 1826. " Freneau. 



96 The Political Activities of Philip Freneaii. [560 

One stormy night in December, 1832, the old man left 
Freehold to walk to his home. " He crossed a bog- 
meadow to shorten the distance. The blinding snow be- 
wildered him and he lost his way and sank in the morass. 
He succeeded in getting out and gaining dry ground, but 
in attempting to climb a fence he fell and broke his hip. 
When discovered he was lying under an apple-tree at the 
edge of the meadow — dead." ^' 

About two hundred yards from the spot where Freneau 
lived in Mount Pleasant is a neat monument bearing this 
inscription: 

POET'S GRAVE. 

PHILIP FRENEAU, 

Died Dec. 18, 1832. 

Age 80 years, 11 months, 16 days. 

He was a native of New York, but for many 
years a resident of Philadelphia and New Jersey. 

His upright and benevolent character is the mem- 
ory of many and will remain when this inscription 
is no longer legible. 

" Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high 
And bids the pure in heart behold their God." 

^^ New Bedford Mercury, 1884. De Lancey suggests that Fre- 
neau was caught in a " blizzard," and it is likely that he was, for 
the New York paper of Dec. 18, 1832, contains an account of a 
violent snow storm. See Albany Daily Advertiser, Dec. 18, 1832, 



CHAPTER V 
CONCLUSION 

We may fitly close this sketch by looking over Freneau's 
career and making an estimate of his personal character. 
It is important to do this, for a just conception of Fre- 
neau's character must be entertained before a nice judg- 
ment upon some points in our political history can be 
rendered. 

In its outward aspects Freneau's life was a failure. As a 
man of genius he availed himself of the undisputed privi- 
lege of that class to be unsuccessful in pecuniary matters. 
It was the fashion for our revolutionary heroes to lan- 
guish in jail for debt and to die forgotten and penniless. 
Freneau's lifeless corpse under the apple-tree reminds us 
of the sad fate of Robert Morris and .Charles Henry Lee 
and Joel Barlow. The poet inherited a comfortable for- 
tune, but this was dissipated long before his death. For 
many years he lived from hand to mouth. We have seen 
that he was intemperate. This was also a privilege in 
Freneau's day, denied to no one, whether to poet or to 
preacher. Notwithstanding these shortcomings, we do not 
find that Freneau was a bankrupt either in character or in 
reputation. On the contrary we have positive evidence 
that his manhood was sound. James Madison speaks of 
his '' spotless integrity." His publishers have nothing but 
praise for his worth as a gentleman and a scholar. His 
friends in New York remembered him as tolerant, pol- 
ished and genial."^ A lady who was a neighbor of Freneau 
and who frequently visited his house told me (in 1898) 
that his uprightness and honesty were never called into 

^ Encyclopedia of American Literature, vol. i, p. 333. 
39 



98 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [562 

question. " He died universally loved and regretted by 
all who knew him/' was the tribute of his old friend John 
Pintard.^ The sturdiness of his nature was illustrated in 
the management of the National Gazette. After his great 
patron Jefiferson had abandoned the cause of the French, 
Freneau with characteristic imprudence and independence, 
continued to pour his broadsides into the friends of neu- 
trality. 

In matters of religion Freneau was indifferent. He 
subscribed outwardly to orthodox forms, not because he 
thought they were true, but because he thought they were 
useful. He was steeped in the philosophy of Rousseau and 
Condorcet. For the human mind as well as for human 
institutions he demanded the utmost freedom. 

" Oh, impotent and vile as vain 
They who would the native thought restrain! 
As soon might they arrest the storm. 
Or take from fire the power to warm. 
As man compel by dint of might 
Old darkness to prefer to light. 

" No, leave the mind unchained and free 
And what they ought mankind will be; 
No hypocrite, no lurking fiend. 
No artist, to some evil end. 
But good and great, benign and just 
As God and nature made them first.^ 

Like many other poets from David to our own time, 
Freneau was a pantheist. 

" All that we see, above, abroad. 
What is it all but nature's God? " 

Like that of many poets, it may be added — like that, 
for instance of Addison or of Steele — his religion was of 
very little consequence to himself or to any one else. 
Nevertheless, he tells us that it extended to '' a practice 
of the golden rule, as far as weak nature would permit." ' 

^ New York Mirror, January, 1833. 
^ Freneau's Poems, 1815 edition. 
* Essays, Robert Slender, p. 49. 



563] Conclusion. 99 

For the austerities of life he had too much contempt. His 
impatience with puritanism finds an expression in the fol- 
lowing verses on " The Puritans ": 

On Sunday their faces were dark as a cloud, 

The road to their meeting was only allowed, 

And those they caught rambling on business or pleasure 

Were sent to the stocks to repent at their leisure. 

This day was the mournfullest day in the week; 
Except in religion none ventured to-speak. 
This day was the day to examine their lives, 
To clear off old scores and preach to their wives. 

In the school of oppression though woefully taught, 

'Twas only to be the oppressors they sought; 

All, all but themselves were bedevilled and blind, 

And their narrow-souled creed was to serve all mankind. 

This beautiful system of nature below. 
They neither considered or wanted to know; 
And called it a dog-house wherein they were pent — 
Unworthy themselves and their mighty descent. 

Such writing as this brought upon Freneau the wrath 
of his New England contemporaries, and earned for him 
much unwarranted abuse. In Connecticut and Massachu- 
setts the newspapers of his day referred to him as an 
atheist and the foe of good government, and fame has 
transmitted this opinion of the man to our own times. 
Yet there is nothing in the history of Freneau's life to jus- 
tify such an unfavorable judgment. He was a man of 
strong conviction and strong utterance and many suffered 
from the freedom of his lance. A careful examination of 
his long life, however, reveals nothing in him that was base 
or low. 

With this knowledge of the man's character we are pre- 
pared to take up a story that has thrown discredit upon his 
name and upon the name of Jefferson. The story is that 
Freneau in his old age said that Jefferson did write for 
the National Gazette; that, indeed, he wrote the most 
offensive articles that appeared in that paper. In other 
words, we are told that Freneau admitted that he had 

LefC. 



100 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [564 

sworn to a lie when he swore before the Mayor of Phila- 
delphia that Jefferson never wrote a line directly, or indi- 
rectly, for the Gazette. This is the way the story comes 
down to us: Griswold, an encyclopedia maker, said that 
Dr. John W. Francis said that Freneau told him that Jef- 
ferson wrote for the Gazette. This statement if true would 
make both Freneau and Jefferson the clumsiest of liars. 
From the nature of the story it cannot be absolutely dis- 
proved, but there are strong considerations for not accept- 
ing it. 

In the first place, Griswold is extremely unreliable. It 
is not meant that the learned preacher would deliberately 
put into print what he knew to be false, but it is meant 
that he was shockingly careless about getting things right. 
In illustration of this we may take the first page of the 
first edition (1842) of the " Poets and Poetry of America," 
where he attempts to sketch Freneau's life. It would be 
difficult to find a page more pregnant with mistakes and 
misinformation than this. In one paragraph of four sen- 
tences there are five palpable errors. This may be cited 
as a curiosity of ignorance: 

"As a reward for the ability and patriotism he had dis- 
played during the war, Mr. Jefferson gave him (Freneau) 
a place in the Department of State; but his public employ- 
ment being of too sedentary a description for a man of 
his ardent temperament he soon relinquished it to con- 
duct in Philadelphia a paper entitled ' The Freeman's Jour- 
nal.' He was the only editor who remained at his post 
during the prevalence of the yellow fever in that city in 
1791. The Journal was unprofitable and he gave it up in 
1793 to take command of a merchant ship in which he 
made several voyages to Madeira, the West Indies and 
other places. His naval ballads and other poems relating 
to the sea written in this period are among the most spir- 
ited and carefully finished of his productions." 

Now, (i) Freneau did not give up his government posi- 
tion to edit a paper, (2) he did not edit the Freeman's Jour- 



565] Conclusion. 101 

nal, (3) yellow fever was not prevalent in Philadelphia in 
1791, (4) he did not take command of a merchant ship 
when he left Philadelphia in 1793, (5) his naval ballads 
were not composed in the period of which he is speaking. 
It is submitted that we should be very reluctant to attach 
any importance to anything that such a careless writer 
might rehearse from memory. 

In the second place, we know that the same Dr. Francis 
who is quoted as having cast such a foul imputation upon 
Freneau's character, regarded the poet as a man of sterling 
integrity. If Freneau had really admitted that he had com- 
mitted perjury, Francis would hardly have written these 
words of the perjurer: " His private worth won the admi- 
ration of both parties." Besides, if Freneau had made 
such an admission. Dr. Francis, the President of a great 
Historical Association would have appreciated its histori- 
cal significance and would have himself spoken of it in his 
sketch of Freneau. In that sketch he does not refer to 
any such conversation as Griswold reports. 

In the last place, Freneau's whole life is a denial of Gris- 
wold's statement. The patriot poet was nothing if not 
straightforward and truthful, and our credulity is strained 
when we are asked to believe that he deliberately confessed 
that he was the greatest of liars and the basest of knaves. 
History is wholly against the supposition that Jefferson 
ever wrote a line for the National Gazette and there is 
not the slightest reason to believe that Freneau ever said 
that he wrote for it. 

As to Freneau's part in the history of our politics, little 
need be added to what has already been said. He was 
not a statesman in any sense of the word. A violent tem- 
perament and an intolerant nature unfitted him for the 
leadership of men, while narrowness of mind made him 
unsafe as a counsellor. Nor was he a politician in a prac- 
tical sense. He sought no ofifice and he entered into no 
combinations to secure party advantage. He did not look 
to office as a reward for his services as a publicist. He 



102 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [566 

advocated democracy for its own sake. In the enthusiasm 
born of sincerity of purpose is to be found his greatest 
strength. The glow of conviction was upon all his writ- 
ings, and when he came out with an article denouncing 
Adams or Hamilton, his words burned themselves into 
the mind of the public. He appealed to the populace, who 
read and applauded, and when election time came voted his 
way. So sure and so uniform was his success in this field 
that it is safe to say that, excepting Jefiferson himself, 
democracy in America in the first years of our national life 
had no abler champion than Philip Freneau. 



THE PUBLICATIONS OF PHILIP FRENEAU 

(A) Newspapers, 

1. ''The National Gazette." Published at Philadelphia. 
First number, October, 1791; last number, October, 1793. 
A complete file of this paper may be found in the collec- 
tions of the Library Company of Philadelphia.^ It is diffi- 
cult to find a complete file elsewhere. 

2. '' The Jersey Chronicle." Published in Mount Pleas- 
ant, New Jersey, in 1795. A file may be found in the 
library of the New York Historical Society. 

3. " The Time-Piece and Literary Companion." Begun 
March, 1797. Freneau was connected with it less than a 
year. A file may be found in the Lennox Library in New 
York. 

(B) Books. 

I. "A Poem on the Rising Glory of America; being an 
Exercise Delivered at the Public Commencement at Nas- 
sau Hall, September 25, 1771." 

This was published at Philadelphia in 1772. It is a 
small unbound octavo of 2y pages. It may be found in 
the Library of Princeton College. 

Hildeburn has the following note on this publication: 

" It is attributed to Judge H. H. Brackenridge and also to 
Brackenridge and Freneau jointly. In the Edition of Freneau's 
Poems, printed on his own press and under his supervision at 
Monmouth in 1809 [he should have said 1795] this poem is given 
a prominent place without any reference being made to Bracken- 
ridge's share in its composition. On the title page of Bracken- 
ridge's * Poem on Divine Revelation ' that piece is said to be by 
the same person who on a similar occasion delivered a small poem 
on the rising glory of America. This may have been the ground 

^ Philadelphia offers the best facilities for the study of Freneau. 
The Library of the Pennsylvania Historical Society contains 
nearly all his works. 



104 The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. [568 

on which the last-named poem was attributed to Brackenridge. 
But as it admits of the construction that he only read or recited 
the earlier poem of which Freneau claims the sole authorship, I 
have placed it under the latter's name." Hildeburn's Issues of the 
Press of Pennsylvania, vol. ii, p. 148. 

2. ''Voyage to Boston. A Poem." A small octavo of 
24 pages; printed in Philadelphia in 1775. 

3. ''The British Prison-Ship. A Poem in Four Can- 
toes." An octavo of 23 pages; printed in Philadelphia in 
1781. 

4. " New Travels through North America." This is a 
translation by Freneau of Claude C. Robin's "Voyage 
dans L'Amerique Septentrionale." This small octavo vol- 
ume of 112 pages was published in Philadelphia in 1783. 
It may be found in the library of the Historical Society 
of Pennsylvania. 

5. " The Poems of Philip Freneau, Written Chiefly dur- 
ing the Late War." An octavo volume of 415 pages, pub- 
lished in Philadelphia in the year 1786. This very rare 
and valuable volume may be found in the Library of the 
Pennsylvania Historical Society. 

6. " A Journey from Philadelphia to New York by way 
of Burlington and South Amboy. By Robert Slender, 
Stocking Weaver (Freneau)." This is a small octavo of 
28 pages; published in Philadelphia in 1787. It may be 
found in the New York Historical Library. 

7. " The Miscellaneous Works of Mr. Philip Freneau 
containing his Essays and Additional Poems." Published 
in Philadelphia, 1788; it may be found in the Library of 
Congress. 

8. " The Village Merchant " : A Poem to which is added 
the Country Printer. A small octavo of 16 pages, printed 
at Philadelphia in 1794. 

9. "Poems Written between the years 1768 and 1794 by 
Philip Freneau of New Jersey." This was printed at 
Mount Pleasant in 1795, at the press of the author. It 
may be found in the Library of Congress, and in the 
libraries of Harvard and Columbia Universities. This edi- 
tion contains the major part of Freneau's poems. 



569] The Publications of Philip Freneaii. 105 

10. " Letters on Various and Interesting Subjects many 
of which have appeared in the Aurora. By Robert Slen- 
der, O. S. M." (O. S. M. — One of the Swinish Multitude.) 
Small octavo of 142 pages. Published in Philadelphia in 
1799. It may be found in the library of the Pennsylvania 
Historical Society. 

11. "A Laughable Poem on Robert Slender's Journey 
from Philadelphia to New York." This is a reprint under 
a new title of No. 6. 

12. '' Poems Written and Published during the Ameri- 
can Revolutionary War, and now Republished from the 
Original Manuscripts interspersed with Translations from 
the Ancients, and other pieces not heretofore in print." 
Published in two duodecimo volumes in Philadelphia in 
1809. It is to be found in the library of the Pennsylvania 
Historical Society. 

13. '' A Collection of Poems on American Affairs, writ- 
ten between the year 1797 and the Present Time." Pub- 
lished in New York in two duodecimo volumes in 181 5. 
To be found in the Boston Public Library and in the 
Library of Congress. 

14. '' Poems on Various Subjects, but chiefly illustrative 
of the Events and Actors in the American War of Inde- 
pendence." This is a reprint of the edition of 1786. It 
was published in facsimile in London in 1861 by J. R. 
Smith. 

15. ''Poems Relating to the American Revolution." 
With an Introduction, Memoir, and Notes by E. A. 
Duyckinck, New York, 1865. 

16. " Some Account of the Capture of the Ship Aurora." 
New York, 1899. 



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